


a song someone sings

by orphan_account



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Sex, Assault, Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Period-Typical Homophobia, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Imbalance, Pseudo-History, Rimming, Russian Empire, Stockholm Syndrome, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-13 15:00:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16894779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The curls fall away easily, settling down Patrik’s pale back where he’s allowed the blanket to fall and nestle in his lap. There’s an angry yellow bruise following down his thin spine, and Jonathan wants to run his fingers over the knobs, but he continues to cut instead, pulling Patrik’s hair as taut as it will go before he swiftly brings the knife down, cutting close to the scalp. He is careful not to nick Patrik, working quickly and efficiently, trying to keep the hair even until all the curls are gone.He runs his hand gently over Patrick’s head when he is done, feeling the pinpricks of hair. “I am sorry,malysh.”Patrik shakes his head, not bothering to touch his hair. He sits quietly, looking out into the forest, tear streaks down his cheeks. Jonathan hadn’t even noticed when he began to cry.“I think,” Patrik says, voice so low that he is barely audible, “there is no more tsesarevich.”alternately: the anastasia au





	a song someone sings

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my long-awaited Anastasia-but-not-really-au.
> 
> This fic does not follow _Anastasia_ , so if that's what you're looking for, I would turn around now. Instead it loosely follows the historical facts of the execution of the Romanov family as accurately as you know, one can make it involving hockey players. 
> 
> Please enjoy!

When the Fiat parks outside the house, Jonathan knows that it is over; Nikolai Alexandrovich will die for his sins against man and country.

It is a bittersweet feeling to know that the former tsar will die. He has guarded the man and his family for over a year now, and he has learnt the routine of the few daily habits that Yurovsky has allowed the formal royal family to keep while in captivity. He will miss the mundane routine of their prayers, of their twice-a-day-walks, of the grand duchesses’ few laughs; after Nikolai Alexandrovich is dead, Jonathan will have no routine to follow.

The Fiat’s engine roars.

His breath quickens, heart seeming to beat faster in anticipation. He’s been waiting for this moment since the Revolution, since the former imperial family had been moved to Tobolsk.

Jonathan stands stalk-still, his eyes scanning the rooftops for any movement. The night is still and quiet except for the rumbling of the engine. Ten meters away across the courtyard, in the House of Special Purpose, Yurovsky is luring the former tsar to the basement where he will finally meet his end.

He pulls at the collar of his shirt, feeling sweat beading down the back of his neck. It is humid tonight, muggy. His shirt is already clinging to his skin, sticky with perspiration. He wants nothing more than to abandon his post and take a cold bath, but Yurovsky has trusted him to keep watch. The White Army is close, and they can’t allow the dirty monarchists to restore Nikolai Alexandrovich to the throne.

A shot rings out from the basement.

It’s loud and clear, even over the sound of the engine that is _supposed_ to stop any sounds escaping, but the engine is doing nothing to cover the noise of repeated gunfire.

It only takes moments for lights to flicker on in the nearby houses.

“Shit,” Jonathan curses, eyes sweeping across the rooftops swiftly for any signs of movement. People are starting to open their windows. They won’t stick their heads out because they know that they will be shot, but they _are_ listening and watching; it is no secret to anyone in Yekaterinburg that the Romanovs are being held captive at the Ipatiev House. They will know that Nikolai Alexandrovich has been executed.

Jonathan lifts his rifle in warning as more shots ring out from the basement.

 _It will only take a moment_ , Yurovsky had said, _Nikolai Alexandrovich will die tonight_.

It has been more than a moment—it has been five agonizingly long minutes—and Jonathan knows now that it is not just the former tsar who has died: Yurovsky has executed the entire family.

The gunfire stops, and Jonathan holds his breath. He cannot feel sorry for the arrogant tsar or tsarina—he _cannot_ , but there is an ache suddenly for the young grand duchesses and even for the cursed tsesarevich. He will not call them innocent—they _are_ Romanovs—but what do four grand duchesses know about ruling a country? What could Nicholas have possibly taught his sickly son?

He cannot call the Romanov children _innocent_ , but he does not think that God will look kindly upon them for the murder of four defenseless women and a child.

It feels like a lifetime before Ermakov stumbles from the house. The bastard is drunk and fumbles about in the dark, stumbling over his own two feet before he finds Jonathan.

“I have touched the royal cunt,” he says in greeting as he grins wide, alcohol wafting off his breath.

Jonathan sneers in disgust. Alexandra Feodorovna was an arrogant, cunning woman who did not know her place, but there should be _some_ semblance of respect for a dead woman who cannot defend herself. It is a shame to touch a woman in her most private of places against her permission when alive, but to do it when she is dead is a _disgrace_.

Ermakov laughs before he turns his head away, spitting on the ground. “Fucking bitch.”

Jonathan balls one hand into a fist, keeping it at his side to resist punching Ermakov. “Nikolai Alexandrovich is dead?”

Ermakov grins like a mad man. “They are _all_ dead.”

The information shouldn’t be a shock to Jonathan—he _heard_ the gunshots—but it does make him unclench his fist, the confirmation from the executioner sending a wave of different emotions down his spine. There is joy at the death of the tsar and tsarina, but an overwhelming sense of guilt too over the deaths of the grand duchesses and the tsesarevich. Yurovsky had said only the tsar would die; he had never mentioned the tsarina or their five children.

He remembers the children’s laughter even in the darkness of the Ipatiev House where Yurovsky stripped them more and more of basic decency. Even when not knowing if they would live or die, the Romanov children had still managed to laugh.

“Don’t tell me you feel for them?” Ermakov asks, eyes going wide in anger.

Jonathan keeps his head high. “It has been a glorious revolution.”

Ermakov stares at him for a long moment. He has never liked him, putting rumors into the other soldiers’ heads that he is somehow a traitor, lesser than them and not truly Russian because of his French mother, but he is too drunk, or maybe too high off the adrenaline of the execution, to push any further. “Scum,” he says, spitting at the ground. “Yurovsky wants the bodies moved.”

“I am to keep watch.”

Ermakov grunts. “ _You_ are to move the bodies.”

Jonathan’s fist clenches again. “To where?”

“The truck,” Ermakov answers, pointing sloppily over his shoulder to where the automobile is still running.

“Who is to help me?”

Ermakov shrugs. “No one.” He laughs, clapping Jonathan on the shoulder before drunkenly stumbling away in the direction of Yurovsky’s office.

Jonathan watches the officer walk away, blood boiling in irritation. He leans his rifle against the wall, eyes quickly scanning across the rooftops again. The lights are still on in the windows, shadows moving. The people will be waiting to see the body of their tsar.

He signals for the Fiat’s engine to cut off, waiting a good few minutes before he heads to the house. He will check the bodies first, and then decide the best way to move them. It will hopefully be enough time for people to lose interest.

The house is eerily quiet when he enters, void of any noise except for the creaking of the floorboards. Even from a floor above, Jonathan can smell the gun smoke still in the air and the underlining scent of blood and human excrement. It smells like death, heavy and thick.

The door leading to the basement creaks open ominously in the still night. The smell is even more overpowering as he makes his way down the steps, guided only by a dim, low light hanging from the ceiling. His breath quickens as he walks, the smell reminding him of the nights he spent in the trenches, surrounded by the bodies of his fellow soldiers.

He has to stop at the bottom of the stairs to lean against the wall and squash the feeling of overwhelming panic down. He is not in the trenches, desperately trying to breathe through a flimsy cloth as they’re bombarded with gunfire and mustard gas. He is here, in the Ipatiev House, steps away from the bodies of the dead royal family. They cannot shoot him. They cannot kill him. They are ghosts now.

He pushes himself away from the door, straightening his back. There are only ghosts here now, and he is a living, breathing, person.

The door to the execution room has been left ajar, but even from the end of the corridor he can see a mixture of blood and urine seeping out through the small opening. When he is close enough, he uses the toe of his boot to swing the door open all the way.

He was expecting seven bodies, but there are eleven strewn about the room in various states of distress. The tsar is closest to the door, mouth open wide in shock, torso still seeping a steady stream of blood. Next to him lies the tsarina, part of her head gone from a single bullet wound, and next to her lies the tsesarevich, eyes closed, his bright blond curls stained red from blood, slumped near the chair he fell out of. His sisters and their retainers are huddled in the back of the room against a door, cornered like animals.

It was an agonizing death. There are bullet holes scattered everywhere, their casings haphazardly left amongst the bodies. Ermakov’s shot is shit when sober, and ten times worse when drunk. He must have missed multiple times to need so many bullets.

Jonathan steps over the body of the tsar, careful not to step on the tsarina, heading towards where the grand duchesses lie, huddled together in their very last moments. Their heads are caved in from gunshots, their brains splattered against the back wall. To be huddled against the wall like this means that they were probably still alive when Ermakov and Yurovsky crept over to them to deliver the final blow. They must have been alive when their father, mother, and brother were shot.

He feels anger creep up his spine. It’s useless, unnecessary, more like pity than anything else. They were women, defenseless against the rule of their father that brought them here, defenseless against the men who so viciously murdered them. They were Romanovs, but they were also useless. Killing them was pointless.

He turns sharply towards them, the toe of his boot knocking angrily into the head of the dead tsesarevich.

The tsesarevich gives a faint, barely audible moan.

Jonathan stops, heart pounding.

The tsesarevich doesn’t make another noise and remains motionless. Gently, Jonathan pushes at the boy’s head with his toe again.

The boy gives a barely there moan. This time his eyes flutter weakly, lips parting.

Jonathan freezes.

The boy takes a deep breath, choking on the blood that’s filled his mouth. He makes desperate wheezing noises so brutal that Jonathan can’t resist reaching down and angling his head to the side so that the blood flows freely from his mouth and no longer blocks his throat.

The boy moans in fear when Jonathan’s fingers touch his clammy skin, making a feeble attempt to lift his arm to fight back, but he is too weak. Jonathan can see where the boy hasn’t been shot, but stabbed—bayonetted to be more exact, his shirt torn.

“You are alive,” he says dumbly, hands still on the boy’s face.

The tsesarevich’s eyes flutter open. They are so blue, bright like a cold day in the middle of winter, life still in them, but there is fear too. He searches Jonathan’s face, and when he seems not to recognize him, that life starts to fade away, like whatever string he was holding onto to keep alive has snapped, knowing that he will not be saved. He begins to cry, using what must be the last of his energy to sob violently.

“ _Be quiet_!” Jonathan demands, voice low in a hiss. Moving the bodies is his task alone, but he knows not for how long. Yurovsky will grow impatient soon and surely send more men to help. “If you want to live, be quiet!”

The tsesarevich closes his eyes, body still raking with sobs, but he’s quiet now, face pushed into a pool of blood.

“You are disgusting,” Jonathan says, standing. He watches the boy cry, disgust running through his veins until he takes a moment to lift his eyes and survey the room around them. They are surrounded by the boy’s dead family, surrounded by the scent of their blood and piss and shit, and suddenly that disgust turns into horrifying pity. The tsesarevich is a boy, a _child_ , who watched his entire family be murdered before he was violently stabbed and left for dead.

He should not feel anything for this boy born with the silver spoon in his mouth—for this _Romanov_ —but he does.

“Hush,” Jonathan says, voice softer as he kneels, directing the boy’s face from the blood. “Hush now.” He wipes the boy’s face with his sleeve, smearing the blood. “I will take you from here, but you must be quiet. Do you understand?”

The tsesarevich doesn’t answer, but his sobs have quieted. Jonathan smooths the hair from his face gently. “You must be quiet, _malysh_. No matter how much it hurts, you must be quiet.”

The tsesarevich closes his eyes, falling silent. For a moment Jonathan thinks that the boy has given up and joined his relatives, but eventually he nods. “ _Da_.”

Jonathan tucks a bloody curl behind the boy’s ear, entertaining for a moment the thought of wrapping his hands around his neck and crushing it, but the pity he feels deep in his soul will not let him. “They will kill me for this,” he sighs before he reaches under the boy, lifting him.

The noise the tsesarevich lets out is agonizing. “Quiet, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan reminds him, feeling a sickening wetness against his chest, knowing immediately that it is blood. He also feels an odd set of lumps on the tsesarevich’s chest, but he doesn’t have time to explore or think about them.

This boy will surely die—and he will too if Ermakov discovers them—but it is a fate worse than death to be left here at the mercy of Ermakov and his men. They will take great joy in assaulting the boy and tearing him apart until they know for sure that he is truly dead.

“Close your eyes,” Jonathan says, jostling the boy to get a better grip of him. “Close your eyes and sleep. It will be over when you wake.” The tsesarevich moans, head rolling until his face is smashed into Jonathan’s neck, lips wet from blood splatter.

It will be by the grace of God that when they leave the Ipatiev House, the tsesarevich will be dead.

The walk up the stairs is slow. With every step he takes, the voice inside of Jonathan’s head grows louder, warning him of the danger and sheer stupidity of what he’s doing, but he cannot turn back. Something akin to guilt gnaws at his insides, spurring him on. Even if the tsesarevich dies, at least he won’t die alone in that cursed basement, surrounded by slowly decaying bodies.

At the top of the stairs, the tsesarevich moans quietly into his neck. His breaths are so shallow that Jonathan starts to hold his own, waiting to feel the tsesarevich take his last, but the boy holds on.

Jonathan wants to call him a stubborn shit, but he firmly clasps his mouth shut when they reach the door to the house.

The Fiat is waiting, but there is no one in the courtyard. In the still of the night Jonathan can hear the others celebrating in Yurovsky’s office, singing an old revolutionary song. They are all drunk at least, and it will probably take them some time to realize that Jonathan and the last heir to the Russian throne are gone.

He will take the tsesarevich to the Koptyaki forest where he knows of a hunting cabin, far into the woods where Ermakov and his men won’t be able to find them. Everyone here is from Moscow or from Saint Petersburg, and know nothing of the forest or of hunting. Finding them will be an impossible task—getting to the hunting cabin an even _more_ impossible one.

Jonathan cannot carry the dying tsesarevich all the way to the cabin. It is at least an 25 kilometer walk, and the most recent rains have turned the ground to mud. He’ll have to take the Fiat as far as it will go and do the rest on foot, but turning on the truck will arouse the interests of the other men. Once the engine is on, it will be a race against time to get on the road and to relative safety.

“All of this for _you_ ,” Jonathan whispers lowly, eyes downcast to look at the tsesarevich. His eyes are closed, and he makes no indication that he even heard Jonathan, but he is still breathing shallowly, lips sometimes fluttering against Jonathan’s neck.

Jonathan is risking life and death to help this—this _boy_ , this dirty, Romanov boy, the _tsesarevich_ , the last heir to the Russian throne. All he’s wanted for the past year was an _end_ to the Romanovs, but here he is, helping the one person who can continue their cursed line escape.

He is a pitiful man, he knows. Pitiful and disgusting. Everything they have worked for will crumble if the tsesarevich lives and makes it back to the White Army, but he cannot bring himself to snap the boy’s neck and put an end to this idiotic task.

Over the past year, an unnecessary, dirty, fondness for the tsesarevich and his sisters has grown inside of him. His hatred for the tsar and tsarina has never waned, but it had been impossible not to find the Romanov children charming, even Patrik, the tsesarevich who was often too sickly to leave his bed and who often stared at the guards, eyes blank and defeated, but who never recoiled or broke eye contact when they cursed at him.

The Romanov children’s resilience and their ability to smile and even laugh as their world was slowly closing in around them is what grew that fondness inside of Jonathan, fondness he suspects some of the other guards felt too by the way they turned their backs when the grand duchesses looked out their windows or when they spoke to the maids.

Yurovsky had promised death to the tsar. He had said nothing about the tsarina or their children.

It feels like betrayal as Jonathan gently loads Patrik into the bed of the truck. There is nothing there but a tarp, and he tucks that against the boy, hoping it will lesson some of the blows from the bouncing across unpaved roads; it will be painful, and aggravate the numerous stab wounds littering Patrik’s body.

If Patrik survives to become emperor, Jonathan will swear all allegiance only because of the boy’s stubborn ferocity to live.

“You will litter me with jewels for this, _malysh_ ,” he says, tucking a curl behind Patrik’s ear. He runs his fingers over the boy’s lips, feeling the faintness of his breath.

Oh, how much easier it would be if Patrik would just succumb to death now, but the boy is stubborn, oh so fucking stubborn.

“If you die now, I will be very cross, _malysh_.” Jonathan closes the gate of the truck as quietly as he can. He can hear the men still in Yurovsky’s office, but as soon as the engine starts, they will spill into the courtyard to see what has happened.

He cranks the engine vigorously, sending a quick prayer skywards before he climbs into the driver’s seat, hand shaking on the clutch. “Please don’t stall,” he begs into the air, taking a few, shaky, frightened, breaths before he presses the starter button.

The truck springs to life, shuddering with the power of the engine. Jonathan shifts the gear and takes his foot off the clutch while he presses the gas pedal, the whole time holding his breath. It feels like it takes a year before the truck slowly lurches forward, ungraceful, but he doesn’t care—the truck is on and moving, and he presses his foot down on the gas pedal hard, lurching the car forward again and sending them on their way.

He does not look back. He knows that the others have heard the truck and saw it leave, and it will not take long before they realize that he is gone, and so too is the body of the tsesarevich.

A search will be called for. Ermakov’s men will break into every house, every building, looking for them. They will leave no rock unturned, and they will not stop until the tsesarevich’s body is recovered.

The realization that they will _have_ to leave Russia hits Jonathan almost like a brick. His thoughts had only been about getting Patrik out of the Ipatiev House and to the forest. In his stupidity he hadn’t stopped to think about what would happen _after_.

He _could_ take Patrik to the White Army, where they would kindly take the tsesarevich in and use him as a rallying point, but he will not. He cannot give the tsesarevich back. He has already destroyed part of the glorious Bolshevik revolution by helping Patrik escape—he will not destroy it further by handing their enemies the tsesarevich on a silver platter.

But they cannot stay in Russia, either. Even if they are to leave Yekaterinburg alive, Patrik is too recognizable. Russia had waited so long for a heir that the moment the boy had been born he had become the child of the people. Before he had met them, Jonathan couldn’t pick the grand duchesses out of a group of women, but the tsesarevich? Jonathan knew the boy’s face better than he knew his own brother’s. It will only take one person to recognize him and they will risk death all over again.

He curses loudly, turning the truck off the main road and cursing again when he hits a bump, the truck swaying impossibly in the mud before it straightens out again. It must be agonizing in the bed of the truck. He presses his foot harder on the gas, willing the truck to go faster.

The truck picks up speed, lasting longer than he initially thought it would before it gets stuck, unable to go any further in the tough terrain.

He climbs out of the cab, looking back at the road in irritation. The truck was the only way to get here, but it’s left tracks in the mud, tracks that can easily be followed.

This is a fool’s errand. Ermakov and Yurovsky will find them easily. Hopefully the boy’s end will be swift, but he cannot say the same for his own. Ermakov will take great pleasure in torturing him.

But God maybe is watching over them, because the moment he opens the bed to retrieve Patrik, the skies open, pouring down. He tilts his head back, looking up at the sky, giant fat rain drops pouring into his eyes, and even though this rain will make the next four kilometer walk hell on earth, it will at least shift the soil, erasing their tracks.

“God must really love you,” he says as he crawls into the bed, hands cold against Patrik’s cheek. His skin is surprisingly still warm.

Patrik’s eyes flutter open into half-lids, looking at Jonathan but not _really_ looking. His light is beginning to go out. He whimpers when Jonathan touches him, the pain he must be in unbearable, but as long as the boy is willing to live, Jonathan is willing to help.

“Quiet, my _malysh_ ,” he says, trying to make his voice soft. “There is only a little more ways for us to go before you may rest.”

Patrik nods, using what little strength he has to wrap his arm around Jonathan’s shoulders as they slide out of the truck. He gasps when the raindrops hit his face, immediately trying to hide from the weather in Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan shifts him, already feeling the ache in his arms. The tsesarevich might have been sickly in the Ipatiev House, but he still weighs that of a growing boy.

He spends the excruciating trek talking to Patrik to distract himself from the pain, despite never getting a response. He tells Patrik of his childhood and of the time he spent in the army, fighting the Germans and living in the trenches. Patrik continues to cling to life, his breath hot against Jonathan’s neck. Sometimes his lips drag against Jonathan’s skin as if he is trying to speak, but he remains silent.

Jonathan’s pace is torturously slow. He has to stop from time to time to rest against a tree, but he keeps going, despite the mud, despite the pain in his legs and the ache in his arms.

They have come too far to give up now.

When the cabin finally comes into view two agonizing hours later, Jonathan almost collapses in happiness. He has to set Patrik down in the mud to retrieve a crowbar that’s been left hanging from a tree so he can pry the boards off the door, but at least the rain has turned into a light drizzle.

He sets the torch into the mud next to Patrik before he works at the boards, prying each nail out. They go easily, the cabin old and the wood breaking easily. The cabin has not been used in a long time, and it’s made even more obvious when Jonathan manages to get the door open. It smells like mold, and he can see it near the roof, but there is a bed and a place to make a fire, and for now that is all they need.

There is no resistance when Jonathan picks Patrik up. The boy is limp like a doll.

He brings Patrik into the cabin, lying him on the floor. It’s uncomfortable, but he cannot put Patrik in the bed while the boy is soaking wet.

He finds a store of wood in a corner and a packet of matches along with a first aid kit on a shelf before he starts a fire in the little stove. The smoke might give away their location, but there is a chance, even in the summer, for hypothermia to set in. Patrik’s body is weak and needs the warmth to survive.

Jonathan ignores his own wet clothes to strip Patrik of his. He starts with the boy’s shoes and wet socks before he starts on his trousers. The material clings to his legs as Jonathan slowly inches the trousers down, gradually revealing pale skin and old, purple bruises. There were rumors that the tsesarevich suffered from the English disease.

He works on Patrick’s tunic next, fingers feeling weak as he undoes the buttons, slowly revealing an undershirt, and to his surprise, _gems_. There are precious, beautiful gems sewn into the material.

He runs his hands across the stones. Some are cracked and broken, but they build a solid barrier, feeling impregnable. He tries to push his fingers between the jewels to find a weak spot, but there is none. They are too closely sewn together for his fingers to penetrate.

Jonathan’s brows come together in curiosity. He slides his fingers under the undershirt, feeling Patrik’s hollow breaths. He expects to find stab wounds from the bayonets, but there are none. Those damn gems acted like a shield.

He can’t help but let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head as he runs his hands over the gems. When Yurovsky had confiscated the Romanovs’ things, he had been so _mad_ at the lack of expensive jewels, but the jewels had been here all along, sewn into Patrik’s undershirt.

Very carefully he works the undershirt off, setting it down near the stove. Patrik’s chest is bare of cuts, but there are dark bruises, possible remnants from the force of the bayonets, and maybe a gunshot, but the gems held strong, keeping him protected.

There are some larger bruises on Patrik’s stomach, possibly from being brutally kicked, but there seems to be no other ailments that Jonathan can physically see. “You little bastard,” he says, recoiling on his ass and shaking his head. “You are a liar, just like your father, Patrik Nikolaevich.”

Patrik remains silent, unconscious. Jonathan reaches out, soothing a wet curl from his head. The rain has washed away the blood, but there is a deep nick across his forehead that might require a stitch or two to keep it from becoming infected. In the light of the fire, he can see the beginnings of bruises across Patrik’s cheek.

He lifts Patrik off the floor, placing him gently in the bed. The sheets smell of mildew and feel disgusting to the touch, but it is a bed. He pulls the blanket up to the boy’s chin, checking once more that he is breathing before he turns his back to shed his own clothes.

His clothes land on the floor in a wet pile, joining Patrik’s. He finds clothes in the closet, old and worn, itchy when he puts them on, but they warm his skin. He hangs their wet clothes on an old clothing line near the fire, all except for the undershirt. He settles into a chair near the fire, knife and an old tin in hand.

He pries one undamaged gem free and holds it up to the light, watching it sparkle. From the bed, Patrik moans softly.

He had told the tsesarevich that he deserved to be littered in jewels for his rescue, and he plans to make sure that the boy keeps his promise, even if the boy is unaware.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

He spends the rest of the night between sitting in the chair, prying the gems from Patrik’s undershirt, and taking short cat naps, always interrupted by the anxiety of being found.

He startles awake from one nap to find a pair of bright blue eyes staring at him, round in fear as Patrik clutches the sheet to his chest in one pale, bruised hand, the knife in the other.

Jonathan doesn’t remember setting the knife down on the bed, which means that Patrik had managed to crawl out of bed and take it from his grasp without him realizing. “You’re awake, _malysh_.”

“I’m not little,” Patrik says, his speech childlike in its lack of elegance. He sounds more like an orphaned peasant boy than a boy of royal blood.

The first time Jonathan had heard Patrik and his sisters speak, he had thought that their development had been stunted. It had been disheartening to hear them talk, but it had become obvious quite quickly that the children _were_ quite sharp and intelligent, especially Patrik. It had been their isolation from the outside world and the reliance on their nursery far past an acceptable time that had made their speech so stunted and child-like.

Jonathan smiles, turning slowly in his chair to face Patrik more fully. The boy follows his movements, eyes wide with suspicion and fear, body shaking all over. “Will you give me the knife?”

Patrik shakes his head, lips going together into a thin, tight line.

“And what is it that you plan to do with it?” Jonathan asks.

Patrik remains quiet, eyes flicking between him and the door.

Jonathan follows his gaze. “Are you going to kill me and run, _malysh_?”

When Patrik refuses to answer, Jonathan stands slowly, arms out in front of him to show that he’s not holding any weapons. “We are in the middle of the forest, _malysh_. There is no one around us. Did your papa teach you how to hunt? How to start a fire?” He settles gently at the foot of the bed, hand extended, palm face up. “Give me the knife, Patrik.”

Patrik sits shaking, eyes flicking back and forth between his lap and Jonathan’s palm, but eventually he reaches out, deciding that whatever fate awaits him at Jonathan’s hand is better than what awaits him outside. When it’s done, he recoils, sobbing.

“Be quiet _malysh_ ,” Jonathan commands, keeping his voice even.

“You kill me?” Patrik asks, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand and then flinching with pain as he irritates the bruises on his cheek. They’re darker in the light of day. He must have been kicked.

Jonathan takes the knife, setting it up on the shelf. “Kill you, _malysh_?”

Patrik nods, placing his hands on his knees and staring down at them. “Like my family.”

“I did not kill your family.”

Patrik’s head snaps up quickly. His eyes narrow into angry, dangerous slits before he turns his head away, sliding down into the sheets to sulk like a child. Very slowly he brings his knees up to his chest, burying his head against them. It only takes a few moments for his body to start to shake with quiet, angry, sobs.

Jonathan lets him be.

He turns his back to Patrik, taking the time to hide the tin on the shelf as well. Fear will hopefully keep the boy from putting his nose where it does not belong.

Their clothes have dried enough for Jonathan to take them off the line.

He strips as Patrik sobs, redressing quickly. There are stains from blood, a light cooper color now, mostly washed out from the rain, but the material still smells of smoke and gunpowder. They’ll need a proper wash in the stream with soap eventually.

When he is finished dressing, Patrik has quit his sobbing. He’s turned over in bed to watch him, eyes uneasy. “Why?” he asks quietly.

“Why what?” Jonathan asks as he lays Patrik’s clothes out at the foot of the bed. They are even more stained than his own and smell horrible.

Patrik only shakes his head, going closemouthed. He lies still, watching Jonathan’s movements with unease until his stomach gives a rumbling growl, and then he curls up on himself, like making himself into a ball will stop his hunger.

“Hungry, _malysh_?”

Patrik glares, but there’s no passion to it. He’s defeated, face looking hollow with the ever blossoming bruises across his cheek. “I am not little.”

Jonathan raises his eyebrow. “What would you have me call you? Your Royal Highness? You are no longer Patrik Nikolaevich, Tsesarevich of Russia.” Patrik’s glare gets some life back into it. “You stopped being the tsesarevich the moment your father advocated the throne, _malysh_.”

“Papa not—” Patrik starts, but then he thinks better of it. He shakes his head, as if he refuses to believe that his father is no longer the tsar, but he keeps quiet.

Jonathan feels a ping of irritation with the boy. He wants to shake him, hit him maybe, but he keeps his hands to himself. “Now, are you hungry, _malysh_?”

Patrik nods. “ _Da_.”

Jonathan opens the closet, pulling from it an old rifle and a water canteen. When he closes the door, Patrik is staring at him, eyes wide, chest rising up and down rapidly.

“I will not shoot you,” Jonathan says, placing the rifle in the chair as he reaches for a clip of bullets left on a shelf. There are only three left. “There are not enough bullets here for me to waste one on you.”

Patrik’s face crumbles.

Jonathan shakes his head, putting the bullets in his pocket before he slings the rifle over his shoulder. “I will try and shoot us a deer, _malysh_. Ermakov and Yurovsky don’t know these woods, but if they are close the gunfire will bring them here.” He grabs the knife from where he hid it, placing it on the bed next to Patrik. “Get them in the neck, _malysh_.”

Patrik sits up, grabbing the knife quickly and holding it against his chest protectively.

“The neck, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan reminds him as he steps out the front door. “Aim for the neck.”

He stands outside the door listening, not really knowing what for. Maybe the thud of Patrik falling out of bed, or a wail of agony, but when there is nothing, he takes a moment to listen to the sounds of the forest.

It’s quiet but also somehow loud like so many forests are. He cannot hear the voices of other men, but he can hear the birds in the trees and the low humming of insects.

Being here, in this forest, standing outside of the cabin his grandfather built, brings him back to when he was a child, following behind his father with this very same rifle.

He doesn’t know if his father would be ashamed of him for bringing Patrik here or not.

Verkhnyaya Pyshma had been so far removed from Saint Petersburg that he had had no idea that there was even a tsar until Alexander Alexandrovich had died, and when two years later, his son had become Russia’s newest emperor.

He had been a child then, and he remembers the coronation pictures appearing in the newspapers weeks after the ceremony had happened. Those pictures had been the first he had ever seen of Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna.

As he grew, he had cared little for the tsar and tsarina and their five children, although he had come to recognize the face of the beloved tsesarevich from the newspapers. Patrik had been the beloved royal heir, Russia’s last hope. His pictures had appeared in the newspapers daily, however outdated and old they had been. The tsesarevich had been unable to even _breathe_ without it appearing in the papers.

His hatred for the tsar had only begun to fester as he lay in the trenches, and had only grown into an ever-evolving wound when he had been discharged from the Army and sent to Moscow. There he had made comrades in the revolutionary socialists, whose advocation for overthrowing the tsarist government had appealed to him as he had nursed his wounds.

The tsar’s inability to do anything for his people, to relinquish _anything_ to the true people of Russia—the peasants, the factory workers, the _actual_ people—had made Jonathan hate him, and that hatred had carried over to the tsarina too, who had put her trust in dirty men like Rasputin but not in the people.

But here he is now, in the middle of the Koptyaki, harboring the last and most important symbol of Nikolai Alexandrovich’s reign, all that hatred seemingly gone now because he is too exhausted to harbor it anymore. He will never not think that Nikolai Alexandrovich didn’t deserve his death, but there is no point now in feeling anger. The man is dead.

Jonathan stalks the woods silently, preoccupied with his thoughts. He fills the canteen with fresh water from a nearby stream before he starts to walk again, only stopping when he spots what he needs. The doe is small, barely even an adult, a true waste of a bullet and their lives if Ermakov is stalking about the woods, but they need food.

The doe goes down easily once he pulls the trigger, the sound of the gunfire scattering the birds in the trees. He wastes no time finding the deer and swinging it over his shoulders. He left the only knife he has with Patrik, not that he would want to dress the deer out in the open while they’re still fugitives.

He walks briskly back to the cabin, keeping his ears open and his eyes peeled for anything that seems amiss, but there is nothing strange. The forest is dead.

He deposits the deer in the mud and the rifle next to the door before he swings it open.

Patrik is sitting up in bed, knife clutched tightly in his hand. He’s clothed too, eyes very wide as he stares at Jonathan.

“It’s only me, _malysh_.”

“You came back,” Patrik says, looking at Jonathan as if he is some sort of ghost.

Jonathan nods. “I came back.” He steps into the cabin, setting the water canteen on the bed at Patrik’s feet. “I’ll need that knife.”

Patrik looks between him and the open door.

“The knife, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says carefully, extending his hand out, palm up. “I need to prepare the deer.”

Patrik looks around the room confusedly, but he hands over the knife, his hand dropping to his side with a plunk. He just sits there, eyes going back and forth around the room. Jonathan watches him for a moment, waiting for the spell to dissolve, but when Patrik continues to do nothing but stare confusedly, he grabs the skillet off the stove and slowly backs out of the house, leaving Patrik to sort himself out.

He kneels in the mud, using the freshly acquired knife to cut at the deer, removing its innards and cutting small stripes of meat to cook later. He’s distracted by his work, becoming calmingly lost in a task that he’s done a hundred times before. He doesn’t notice when Patrik gets up from the bed until he’s in the doorway.

The boy looks calmer now, but still defeated and hollow. He leans against the doorframe, gingerly sliding down until he can sit, spreading his legs out in front of him. He sits quietly, watching Jonathan work, sometimes tipping his head back to look up at the sky and soak up the sun.

His skin is very pale in the sunlight, marred by the angry black bruise across his cheek. There’s another bruise starting to bloom across the boy’s neck and his collarbones.

“Do you always bruise so heavily?” Jonathan asks, breaking the silence between them. His hands are dirty from blood.

Patrik looks at his hands, nodding slowly. “Always. I fall, I bruise. I stub my toe, I bruise. Knock here, knock there, _I bruise_.” He spits out the last part, looking annoyed and disgusted with himself. “Andrei used to—” He slams his mouth shut, the noise of his jaws coming together loud enough that he’ll cause himself to bruise. Patrik shakes his head, face-falling into sudden unhappiness.

Jonathan makes a nonchalant noise. He does not know who Andrei is, but he assumes that he must have been one of Patrik’s retainers, a loyal supporter of the tsar, probably executed for that affection like so many others.

He’s quiet as he stands, turning his back on Patrik to stalk the little ways from the cabin to the stream to get rid of the innards and the unusable parts of the deer, stopping momentarily to wash his hands and throw water over his face.

Patrik is where he left him when he returns, leaning against the doorframe, the skillet with the fresh meat clutched in his arms, guarding it from the tiny birds that have slowly been gathering.

“Come, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, offering his arm for Patrik to take.

Patrik stands slowly with his help, clutching the skillet for dear life, not letting any of the meat spill out. He sets it down on the stove neatly before he collapses onto the bed, those few simple steps seeming to take the life out of him.

Jonathan starts the stove again. “Have you ever had deer before, _malysh_?” he asks, just to fill the silence between them. He turns his head to look at Patrik, who in turn is watching the flames from the fire through the grate. There are tears in his eyes.

“Me and Papa… we—” the boy whimpers, face crumbling.

Jonathan stares at the boy, unsure of what to do with such fragility. He feels anger suddenly at the thought of anyone shedding tears for the tsar, but that anger soon slips away like a flash in a pan, replaced with pity. This is not a boy crying over the death of the emperor—this is a boy crying over the death of his _father_.

Jonathan stands, reclining on the bed slowly. “Be quiet, _malysh_ ,” he says, reaching out to run his thumb soothingly back and forth across Patrik’s forehead, careful not to touch the cut there. Patrik sobs louder, turning his head into his touch.

“They are all dead,” he sobs, curling up into a ball.

Jonathan sits quietly, moving his thumb back and forth methodically. He doesn’t know how to comfort Patrik, so he doesn’t. Instead he sits silently, thumb moving, watching their dinner burn until Patrik’s sobs recede.

He takes the skillet off the stove, setting it down on a stool before he busies himself with filling an old glass with the water from the canteen. “You need to eat, _malysh_ ,” he says, taking the skillet and setting it at the end of the bed. He hands Patrik the glass of water, watching him take long sips before the boy hands the glass back.

Patrik doesn’t complain when he has to take the food from the pan with his bare hands, or when he has to pull hard to get one bite into his mouth. He chews for a long moment, swallowing harshly.

“ _Gohspodzin_ ,” he says, offering Jonathan the other half of the meat.

Jonathan takes the offering before he sits on the bed next to Patrik. They sit quietly, chewing their food until Patrik decides to break that silence. “You are an officer in the house.” It is not a question, but a statement. They have never been formally introduced to each other, but Jonathan stood guard outside the boy’s quarters long enough that he should be able to recognize him.

He nods, drinking straight from the canteen. It soon becomes empty. He’ll have to make another quick trip to the stream to refill it. “Jonathan Alexandrovich.”

“Jonathan Mikhailovich,” Patrik repeats, letting the name roll of his tongue, sounding for the first time quite elegant as he switches between English and Russian. “Jonathan Mikhailovich,” he says again. “Why?”

“You must be more specific, _malysh_.”

“Why did you—” Patrik flings his arms out in front of him, waving them around to indicate to the room. “Why this?”

“Why did I save you?”

Patrik nods, dropping his arms. “Why?”

“I do not know,” Jonathan admits because in this moment he cannot remember _why_ , and he has no will to think more on the matter. He saved the boy, that is all that matters. “You are alive now. That is all that matters.” Patrik’s face crumbles, almost like he is disappointed in the answer.

“I will not apologize for what happened to your father, or even to your mother,” Jonathan continues, watching Patrik’s face begin to twist in anger. “Nikolai Alexandrovich was a cancer upon his people.”

“Papa—”

“You knew the man only as your father,” Jonathan sneers. “You did not know him for the man that he truly was. A weak, selfish, tyrant.”

Patrik’s eyes are liquid with tears. His mouth opens and closes like a fish, trying to find the words to prove him wrong, but Jonathan suspects that the boy knows the truth. He’s had months to contemplate the fate of his family. Blame for the downfall of the mighty Romanov Dynasty sits solely on the shoulders of Nikolai Alexandrovich.

Patrik stands in a flurry. He stares Jonathan down, hands balled into fists at his sides, looking very much like he wants to strike him, but he decides otherwise, pushing past Jonathan to angrily limp out of the cabin.

Jonathan watches him go, kicking a bed post in annoyance before he storms after the boy. “Patrik Nikolaevich!” he calls, watching Patrik limp through the tall grass, his back straight in pain.

Suddenly Patrik stumbles, tripping over his own feet and landing with a thud in the grass. Jonathan stalks towards him, unsurprised and unimpressed when he finds Patrik crying in the mud.

He sits in a dry bit of grass.

“Papa was a good man,” Patrik says.

Jonathan remains quiet. He picks up a rock, tumbling it between his fingers.

Patrik cries, shoulders heaving with it. He stays face down, face kept out of the mud by his forehead on his arm. Sometimes he moans between sobs, legs moving back and forth. He looks like a small child having a tantrum.

Jonathan waits him out. He’ll grow tired of doing this every time the former tsar comes up in conversation. Hopefully, once they leave Russia, the boy will learn to shut up about the man.

Eventually Patrik turns himself over, getting mud all over the back of his clothes too. He’s filthy with it, looking nothing like a prince. He lies there, arm thrown over his head, resting against his dirty curls. His eyes are wet with tears, lips red and nose dirty from snot.

“I will not deny that you have suffered a great loss,” Jonathan says, looking down at the rock as he speaks. “But the only people who will mourn your loss is you.” He drops his eyes, meeting Patrik’s gaze.

Patrik sucks in a deep breath through his nose. He lies there, eyes locked with Jonathan’s before he gives one, sharp, curt nod. He squeezes his eyes shut, looking pained for a few moments before he pops them back open. “What now?” he asks, voice small, ragged.

“You need a bath, _malysh_.”

Patrik’s bottom lip curls up in distaste. “You will give me to Lenin?”

Jonathan’s slightly surprised that Patrik knows who Lenin is. He assumed that the boy would have been sheltered from his father’s enemy, but Patrik is intelligent. The silence he held in Yekaterinburg was probably a calculating move to gleam as much information as he could off of unsuspecting guards that probably thought him stupid.

“Why would I save you only to hand you right back to Lenin?” Jonathan asks, setting the rock down in the dirt. “Who do you think ordered your execution?”

Patrik doesn’t respond. Instead he picks up the rock Jonathan just set down, rubbing it between his bruised fingers. Out in the high light of the afternoon he looks even more pale, dark bruises highlighted by the sun. They seem to be everywhere, on his face and on his arms, on his hip where his shirt has ridden up.

“We cannot stay here for forever,” Jonathan says when the silence has stretched out between them. “Yurovsky will find us. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he will find us.”

Patrik licks his bottom lip. “The Army,” he ventures. “They’re near.” He glares back at Jonathan when Jonathan sneers at him. “Give me back—”

“ _No_!” Jonathan says vehemently, feeling irritation at even the suggestion. “I do not know why I saved you _malysh_ , but I know it was not to hand you back to the White Army as some sort of martyr.”

Patrik’s nostrils flare. “Cannot be a martyr if I’m alive.”

“Little shit,” says Jonathan, shaking his head.

Patrik smiles, small and tight-lipped. He has dimples that Jonathan hadn’t noticed before. “If you will not give me to Lenin, and not to the Army, then what?”

Jonathan rubs his hands over his face in frustration. He drags the skin down on his cheeks until his eyelids begin to burn. “We must leave Russia.”

“ _Leave_?” Patrik repeats, sitting up quickly. He cringes in pain when he’s up fully, pulling his legs under him.

Jonathan nods. “We cannot stay. Russia is not safe, not for either of us.” Patrik stares at him, disbelief written all over his face. “You and I are fugitives now, _malysh_. Our whole country hates you, and our whole country will hate me for helping you.”

Patrik opens his mouth to say something, but decides better of it. He sets the rock down, tilting his head back to look around the forest. “Where will we go?”

Jonathan hasn’t given it much thought, but he knows that they cannot stay. “Paris,” he says suddenly. He has family outside of Paris. He will take Patrik there and then decide what to do with the boy.

“ _Paris_?” Patrik echoes.

Jonathan shrugs. “Tomorrow we will leave for Saint Petersburg.” He brushes grass from his pants, standing. “Now, come. You are dirty.” He extends his hand.

Patrik shakes his head, taking one long moment to look around him before he takes Jonathan’s hand, letting the man pull him to his feet. “We go to Saint Petersburg together?”

Jonathan nods, letting go of Patrik’s hand and heading off in the direction of the stream. Patrik can bathe and wash his clothes there. He stops walking when he realizes that Patrik isn’t following. “ _Malysh_?” he says, turning to look for him.

“You will not leave me?” Patrik asks, voice small, looking very much like a frightened child.

“No,” Jonathan answers, exasperated. He is suddenly very tired and only wants to take a nap. “Now come.”

“And after?” Patrik asks, still unmoving. “We go to Paris?”

Jonathan studies the boy’s face. Patrik is hesitating, unsure. “Yes, _malysh_. We will go to Saint Petersburg together, and Paris too. And after I do not know what we will do, but I will not leave you.” He _should_ leave the boy in Saint Petersburg and continue on his way to Paris alone, but there is a weird fondness settling at the bottom of his heart. He is responsible for this boy now.

“Come, _malysh_ ,” he urges, sticking his hand out.

Patrik swallows, and then he steps forward, taking Jonathan’s hand.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Patrik bathes in the afternoon sun, skin pale and plastered with bruises. He’s covered from head to toe in them, looking like a painter’s swatch; it’s hard to tell where one bruise ends and another begins.

He is very skinny too, his ribs poking out from under his fair skin, but he sits in the cold mountain water shivering, not once complaining as Jonathan uses a bar of soap to scrub the mud and leftover blood from his clothes.

“ _Gohspodzin_ ,” he eventually says, knees curled up against his chest. “Our cabin. It is yours?”

Jonathan sets down his bar of soap. It’s old, and he had to use the knife to scrape off the mildew. “My grandfather built it when I was a boy.”

Patrik nods, going silent again. He watches Jonathan throw his wet clothes over tree branches to dry. “You will miss it?”

Jonathan picks the blanket they brought with them off the ground, spreading it wide in invitation for Patrik to get out of the water. Patrik wobbles to his feet, stepping into the blanket and letting Jonathan wrap it around his shoulders like a parent taking care of their child. “Spoilt,” Jonathan mutters.

Patrik ignores him to pry more. “You will miss it?”

“No, _malysh_ , I will not miss the dirty old cabin in the woods I haven’t been to since I was a teenager.”

Patrik recoils at the reprimand, hugging the blanket tighter to him. Jonathan sighs, grabbing the rifle from where he left it against a tree. It would be useless against Ermakov’s men, but at least it could give Patrik _some_ time to run. “I have not been to this cabin since I was your age.”

“You are old man?” Patrik says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but Jonathan doubts that any smile of his will for a very long time.

“You are spoilt brat,” he responds, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. He begins to walk, knowing that Patrik will follow along like a puppy.

Patrik sits in the doorway when they return to the cabin, the blanket sliding off his shoulders. He looks around quizzically, lips pressed together in thought. Jonathan leaves him to fish more clothes out of the old closet. They’re moth bitten and smell horrid, but Patrik will have to wear them tomorrow. He cannot walk into town wearing bloodstained clothes. He flings the shirt and trousers over the open door to air when Patrik says, “Where are my gems?”

Jonathan pauses, staring down at the boy.

“My gems,” Patrik repeats, looking up at him determinedly.

For a boy whose life hangs in the hands of a man who wouldn’t apologize for the ruthless murder of his family and could takes his life at any moment, Patrik’s quite _brave_.

“My gems,” he insists, eyes scanning the cabin again.

Those jewels will make Jonathan a very rich man. They can fund their entire trip to Paris in first class, and still leave plenty of money afterwards. “They are safe,” he says, shrugging at Patrik’s angered expression.

“They are mine!” Patrik yells, standing quickly. He looks a fool, oversized blanket falling off his slim frame, his curls flopping wetly into his face.

“They are _safe_ ,” Jonathan insists, putting authority into his voice. He takes one threatening step towards Patrik and Patrik immediately deflates, face breaking into misery as he collapses back onto the floor.

Jonathan immediately feels guilty. This fondness for the boy is a cancer. “We will need money for our trip.” Patrik turns his head away, looking longingly out the door. Jonathan sighs. “When it is over, I will give them back.”

That is a half-truth. He _will_ give Patrik his gems back, but not all of them, especially not if he parts ways with the formal royal. He won’t leave Patrik penniless, but he won’t leave himself at a disadvantage, either. He deserves some sort of payment for what’s he’s done.

Patrik continues to look away, sulking.

Jonathan leaves him alone, concentrating instead on preparing for their journey. They will have to walk to Verkhnyaya Pyshma first, take a train to Perm, and then another to Saint Petersburg. The trek to Verkhnyaya Pyshma should only take three hours, but Patrik is weak and malnourished and not used to walking long distances. They will have to take many breaks, and probably won’t reach town until well past dark.

He wraps the leftover meat from their breakfast in a cloth, tying the cloth tight but also leaving out enough food for their dinner later. This food will only last them for another day before he will have to shoot another deer, which he won’t want to do as they’re drawing closer to town. Yekaterinburg is only sixteen kilometers from Verkhnyaya Pyshma; he does not want to draw any unnecessary attention to them.

He turns, eyes catching on Patrik’s bright blond curls drying in the warm, summer sun. The bruises across Patrik’s face, his baby blues, those damn perfect curls—the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers will instantly recognize the former grand duke. Perhaps they’ll be able to wrap Patrik’s head in cloth, making a hood to hide his hair, but there is always a chance that just _one_ curl will slip loose, exposing Patrik for who he really is.

Jonathan steps forward, leaning against the doorframe, Patrik at his feet. He reaches down without really thinking, running his fingers through Patrik’s still wet curls. They’re soft, slipping through his fingers with ease. Patrik tenses, but soon relaxes, leaning into his touch.

“ _Malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, already hating the words that are about to leave his mouth. “These will have to go.”

Patrik’s eyes are closed. He hums, not understanding what Jonathan said. “Your curls, _malysh_.” Patrik’s eyes fly open. He tilts his head back, looking up at Jonathan, mouth parted in slight shock. “Your people loved you,” Jonathan explains, fingers methodically working through the curls. “They _will_ recognize you.”

“You will cut my hair?” Patrik asks, voice low.

Jonathan nods. “I will have to. And even then we will still have to try and hide your face.”

Patrik’s face is a mix of emotion, looking close to tears again. “It is only hair, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, keeping his voice low and soft. “It will grow back.”

Patrik closes his eyes, nodding. He licks his lips before he reopens them, accepting his fate. “If you must.”

The only thing Jonathan can use to cut Patrik’s hair is the knife. He washes it in a bowl of water before he sharpens it with a stone, hoping to make the cuts easy and swift.

“Hold your head still,” he instructs, pulling a section of hair from the back of Patrick’s neck, forcing the curls straight. Patrik’s whole body tenses, going taut. He sniffles, but when Jonathan leans over to check on him, there are no tears. “It is only hair,” he reminds gently before he makes the first cut.

The curls fall away easily, settling down Patrik’s pale back where he’s allowed the blanket to fall and nestle in his lap. There’s an angry yellow bruise following down his thin spine. Jonathan wants to run his fingers over the knobs, but he continues to cut instead, pulling Patrik’s hair as taut as it will go before he swiftly brings the knife down, cutting close to the scalp. He is careful not to nick Patrik, working quickly and efficiently, trying to keep the hair even until all the curls are gone.

He runs his hand gently over Patrick’s head when he is done, feeling the pinpricks of hair. “I am sorry, _malysh_.”

Patrik shakes his head, not bothering to touch his hair. He sits quietly, looking out into the forest, tear streaks down his cheeks. Jonathan hadn’t even noticed when he began to cry.

“I think,” Patrik says, voice so low that he is barely audible, “there is no more tsesarevich.”

There has not been a tsesarevich since the boy arrived at Tobolsk, but perhaps the cutting of his hair—the one thing that made him so recognizable as the tsesarevich—has finally made Patrik realize that. The Romanovs are all dead, and there will never be another tsar.

Patrik lifts his hands, running his fingers back and forth over his head. When he is satisfied, he gathers the blanket around him and stands, the remnants of his curls falling down his back and onto the floor. He looks so much younger than seventeen with all of his hair gone.

“I will never see Russia again,” he states, eyes wide and liquid, looking defeated in his acceptance.

“You will not,” Jonathan agrees. And neither will he. Once they board that ship in Saint Petersburg, neither of them will ever see their homeland again. He longed for home while he was dug into the trenches, but now he wants nothing more than to leave it.

Patrik nods, falling silent. He gives Jonathan one longing look before he walks past him, collapsing onto the bed. He sheds himself of the wet blanket to climb under the covers, immediately curling up into a ball, his back to Jonathan.

He lies there and he does not move.

Jonathan lets the boy have his moment. He works around him, preparing a bag for their journey. He fills it with the meat, an extra blanket, and the clothes he pulled from the closet earlier for Patrik to wear. He leaves the tin on the shelf; he will pack it while Patrik sleeps.

Patrik falls asleep as he works and does not rouse, not even when Jonathan leaves to retrieve Patrik’s clothes from where he left them at the stream. They’re still damp, but Jonathan sets the clothes on the line when he returns, starting the fire again for light as the sun starts to set.

He tries to wake Patrik to get the boy to eat, but Patrik only mutters and twitches in his sleep, shrugging him off. He will need his energy in the morning, so Jonathan lets him sleep.

He strips and crawls into bed when the sun leaves the sky. Patrik is pushed up against the wall, still curled as tightly as he was hours before, like he’s trying to protect himself from something.

Jonathan doesn’t try to get closer, or touch him. It’s hot in the cabin, even with the fire in the stove dying. He lies still on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Tomorrow they will embark for Verkhnyaya Pyshma, and he will never _truly_ see this cabin again.

He swore to himself that he would never come back here so many years ago. There are dark, unhappy memories here, but he has not been able to think of them, not while all of his attention has been on Patrik and their survival.

He glances over at the boy, watching his stomach fall up and down as he sleeps. He wonders idly what he would have done with the boy if he had been truly injured and died. Buried him in the plot at the back of the cabin where he had buried is own father?

He is thankful that God seems loves Patrik.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

He is woken in the middle of the night by a knee buried in his gut, Patrik’s body twisting as his eyes flutter rapidly behind his eyelids, in the midst of a nightmare that’s dragging horrible moans out of his mouth. His nostrils flare as he moves his hands, trying to escape the monsters haunting his dreams, but he is unable to wake himself.

Jonathan grabs the boy in irritation, forcing the knee out of his gut and dragging Patrik on top of him. He instantly regrets cutting Patrik’s hair because he has no purchase to keep his head still and is forced to dig his fingers meanly into his scalp as he locks his legs around the boy, forcing his thrashing to come to a stop.

“ _Malysh_!” he snaps, feeling Patrik’s eyelashes sweep across his neck as his eyes snap open.

Patrik struggles, breath coming rapidly as he fights Jonathan’s grip.

“ _Malysh_ ,” Jonathan says again, voice gentler. “ _Malysh_ , Patrik, it is only me.”

Patrik stops moving. He sobs, mouth opening wet against Jonathan’s skin. “Hush now,” Jonathan whispers, running his hand comfortingly down his back. “You are safe.”

Patrik shakes his head, leaving wetness against Jonathan’s throat. He breathes heavily through his mouth, chest heaving rapidly.

Jonathan holds him still, making shushing noises as he continues to stroke his back. Eventually the tension leaves Patrik, and Jonathan loosens his grip, but Patrik remains.

“I saw them,” Patrik says moments later, voice strained from sorrow. “I _saw_ it happen.”

Jonathan knows instantly what the boy is speaking of. “It is over now.”

Patrik sobs, curling his fists against Jonathan’s chest. “Mama, Papa, Nastya,” he bawls. “It was so _loud_.”

Jonathan runs his hand soothingly over Patrik’s head, trying not to think about how the execution took place. _No_ , he will not feel sorry for the tsar or tsarina, but that damn fondness is crawling at his skin, making him sick at the thought of Patrik sitting idly in a chair as the guards drew their guns and shot his family.

They probably aimed at the tsar first, all their aggression falling on him before their aggression turned to the tsarina, frozen in place by shock. Patrik had probably sat on his chair, immobile in fear, covered in the blood splatter from his parents as Ermakov and Yurovsky opened fire, scattering bullets and people everywhere. The smoke from their guns must have created such confusion, making it impossible to know where they were shooting.

Patrik must have fallen from his chair in the confusion, maybe hit from a stray bullet that couldn’t penetrate his undershirt. Ermakov must have found him still alive after the smoke cleared and tried to stab the boy repeatedly, even shot him, and probably kicked him in anger when he would not die, knocking him unconscious. In all the confusion Ermakov must have thought Patrik dead, and quickly moved onto his next victim.

Patrik couldn’t have been the only one of the children with gems sewn into his underclothes. His sisters must have had jewels on them as well, making impregnatable bullet proof vests that made it impossible for the soldiers to stab or shoot them successfully.

The grand duchesses must have huddled in the corner, terrified, clinging to one another, begging for their lives.

And Patrik—poor Patrik, waning in and out of consciousness, must have heard his sisters’ screams. He must have heard his sisters’ last agonizing moments.

“It is over now,” Jonathan says again, feeling the rawness of guilt, his stomach turning in sickness. Not even the tsar, he thinks, deserved such a gruesome death.

Patrik only sobs louder.

All Jonathan can do is hold him, stroking his back and giving as much comfort as he can, but it must be meaningless to Patrik; he is being consoled by a man who advocated for the death of his father.

Eventually Patrik exhausts himself out. His breathing slows, his body going rigged in sleep. He’s tense, eyes flicking behind his eyelids as he mewls and twitches in Jonathan’s arms. He’ll have to be woken again from another nightmare in only a few hours.

Jonathan lets the boy slip from his grasp. Patrik rolls away from him, curling up into a ball immediately, always trying to protect himself from an invisible force.

Jonathan stares at him in the dark, heart pounding.

It’s guilt that’s making his heart race. Guilt that he should not have. Nikolai Alexandrovich _had_ to be gotten rid of. He _deserved_ to die for the way he fumbled and let his people suffer, but he, and he alone, should have been made to suffer.

His poor, sweet daughters and his bruised son— _they_ did not deserve to die the way that they did. Not even the tsarina deserved to be gunned down in that dirty basement that Yurovsky had tricked them into.

There isn’t anything Jonathan could have done, he knows. Yurovsky and Ermakov had followed the orders of Lenin and the Ural Regional Soviet without question. Even if Jonathan had been informed that the entire family would be executed, there wasn’t anything he could have done. Yurovsky and Ermakov would have still murdered them, and Jonathan would probably have been disposed of too for his apparent sympathy.

Even if Lenin had decided to spare the tsarina and the grand duchesses, Patrik would have more than likely met the same fate as his father. He was the tsesarevich, the heir to the Russian Empire, he, and he alone, could have carried on the name of the Romanovs.

Lenin would have had the boy executed or sent off to Serbia to die a slow, painful, death.

In no situation would Patrik have been allowed to live.

He should have strangled Patrik in that basement. This regrettable fondness that’s crawled its way into is throat has made him realize that he has created a living nightmare for the boy.

Patrik is alive while his family is dead, and how does one continue to live when everything they’ve ever known has been so violently extinguished?

Patrik moans in his sleep, head twisting backwards.

Jonathan reaches out, wrapping his hand tightly around Patrik’s wrist. Patrik settles, mouth closing into a tight line, nostrils still flaring.

“We will get to Paris together, _malysh_ ,” he promises, even though the boy isn’t awake to hear him.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Jonathan wakes in the early hours of the morning. Patrik is still asleep, curled tightly in on himself.

He slips from the bed, opening the door and leaving it ajar to let in the dawn light as he dresses quietly. He fetches the tin of gems from the shelf, holding it tightly so it won’t make noise as he stuffs it into their pack, tucked safely between the blanket and the spare clothes.

He lets Patrik sleep as he makes the last preparations, but eventually he has to wake the boy; they need to get moving as soon as possible.

He shakes Patrik awake carefully. “ _Malysh_ ,” he says gently, hands braced on Patrik’s body to keep him from lashing out. “ _Malysh_ , it is time to go.”

Patrik wakes slowly, eyes fluttering open in the soft light, confused. He startles at first, but then immediately relaxes when he realizes that it is Jonathan waking him. “It is time, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, removing his hands to let the boy sit up.

Patrik nods groggily, taking his clothes when Jonathan hands them over. He dresses quickly, taking the burnt meat to eat as his breakfast greedily. When he is done, Jonathan hands him the knife.

“It will be a long walk, _malysh_ ,” he explains as they exit the cabin. He doesn’t bother to board the place back up. He slams the door shut, taking a few steps back to look at the cabin for truly the last time. He will _never_ come back to this wretched place.

He must stand there for longer than he means to, because Patrik tugs at his elbow. He smiles gently. “We go to Paris together.”

Jonathan nods, taking one last look at the cabin before he swings the rifle over his shoulder, leading the way.

They make their way slowly, Patrik close at his side. Patrik stumbles from time to time, fingers always reaching out to grab Jonathan’s elbow to steady himself, but he does not complain, not even when the aches in his legs so obviously begin and he starts to fall behind.

“We will rest for a bit,” Jonathan decides when the distance between them has become too far for his liking. Patrik takes the break happily, collapsing in the dirt. They’re barely an hour into their journey, but Jonathan cannot force him faster than what his body can handle.

“We walk to Saint Petersburg?” Patrik asks, pulling a grim face at the thought.

Jonathan takes a swig from the water canteen before he hands it to Patrik. “We cannot walk to Saint Petersburg. We will walk to Verkhnyaya first.”

Patrik drinks hardily before he hands the canteen back. “Verkhnyaya?”

“Verkhnyaya Pyshma,” Jonathan clarifies. “It is the closest town. From there we will take the train to Perm and then on to Saint Petersburg.”

Patrik nods. “How much longer?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Three, maybe four hours. We can rest as much as you would like, _malysh_.”

Patrik shakes his head, standing without his assistance. “I’m okay,” he says, even though he’s obviously in pain.

Jonathan lifts his eyebrows in disagreement, looking Patrik up and down, but Patrik looks determined to keep going already, so he says nothing and extends his arm. “We will go to Paris together.”

Patrik takes his arm without protest. He stays glued to Jonathan’s side as they walk, letting out little pained noises every now and again. He breathes deeply and methodically as they walk, forcing himself through the pain until Jonathan forces them to take another break.

They sit for longer this time, Patrik’s legs spread out in front of him. He massages his legs, digging his fingers hard into his muscles, surely causing them to bruise more. “Andrei carried me,” he says conversationally, lifting his eyes to look at Jonathan. He looks like a puppy.

“I cannot carry you and the pack.”

Patrik’s lower lip protrudes in a pout.

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “You are a brat.” He offers Patrik his hand, lifting the boy to his feet. “Not much longer, _malysh_.”

“I can make it,” Patrik insists, although he is wobbly on his feet and winces with every other step.

They spend the next several hours stopping and starting. Patrik pushes on despite his pain, only complaining and crying once that he cannot go on. Jonathan lets him cry it out, waiting patiently for Patrik to calm down. When is calm again they continue on as if nothing happened.

It is not until after dark that they draw close to Verkhnyaya Pyshma.

Patrik is exhausted, taking a seat in the dirt while Jonathan rids himself of his rifle—he cannot walk into the middle of town holding it and not draw suspicion. He retrieves a scarf cloth from their pack, wrapping it securely around Patrik’s head to make a hood. Patrik lets him do what he wants, too busy chewing down the rest of their food to protest.

“Do not speak,” Jonathan instructs, securing the scarf so it falls further over Patrik’s face, creating shadows that will hopefully help to hide his bruises. “Smile and act simple so that no one will ask you questions.” He pulls Patrik to his feet, despite the boy’s noise of protest. “This is not a game, _malysh_. Yekaterinburg is only down the road. One mistake and you will be back in that basement.”

Patrik stands stalk-still and silent, his hood creating a shadow over his face, but his eyes are wide in fear. He is _petrified_ , as he should be. They are facing life and death.

Yekaterinburg is only an half hour away. Verkhnyaya Pyshma is probably the first place Ermakov and his men came to search before expanding outward, but there is no telling if they have left, or if they are still searching.

Jonathan has not step foot in his hometown since he was a teenager, minimizing the amount of people who might be able to recognize and identify him, but the people here have good memories. His primary school teacher could recognize him and report him to the authorities, ending their journey before it even begins. They must tread carefully.

“Do you understand me, _malysh_?” he asks, holding Patrik tightly by his shoulders.

Patrik just stands there, lips pressed together in a tight, thin line.

“You must trust me, Patrik,” Jonathan says, holding his gaze. “I will not leave you.”

Patrik swallows, mouth opening into a small ‘o’ as he shakily nods. “We go to Paris together.”

Jonathan nods. He lets go of Patrik’s shoulders, swinging the pack over his shoulder. They have only one more mile to go before they can enter town through a backroad that will hopefully lack any checkpoints.

Patrik is silent as they walk, fingers curled loosely at his side. Jonathan doesn’t try to engage him in conversation. His own anxiety is creeping up his spine, making his palms sweaty. They are walking to their death. If there are guards posted at the checkpoint, there is no way that they will make into town. The guards will be Ermakov’s men, surely, and they will recognize them immediately.

But God continues to smile down on Patrik, because to Jonathan’s surprise, there are no guards at the checkpoint. There are barricades blocking the road, but there are no guards there to enforce them. Anyone could drive around the barrier and continue into town.

Jonathan is immediately suspicious. Why have a barricade but no one to man it?

“Jonathan?” Patrik asks quietly, slim fingers on his elbow.

Something is not right, but Jonathan can’t voice his concerns. Patrik is already frightened enough. He cannot add more to the boy’s plate and expect him to play his part without any hiccups. “Everything is alright, _malysh_ ,” he lies, forcing a smile. Patrik doesn’t quite look like he believes him, but he goes quiet, wrapping his fingers around Jonathan’s arm.

Jonathan leads the way from their hiding spot amongst the trees, heart pounding, but he keeps his body relaxed, trying not to let any of his fear translate over to Patrik. He wishes he still had the rifle, not that it would do anything, but he would feel safer. They still have the knife, but it’s tucked safely away in the pack; Patrik could not carry it and concentrate on walking at the same time.

It’s quiet and still when they reach the barricade. Jonathan scans the tree line as they walk around the beaten wood, his breath still, expecting to be shot on sight, but there is _nothing_.

Absolutely _nothing_.

Something is wrong. Terribly wrong, but whatever has gone wrong for Ermakov has gone right for them. Jonathan sends a thank you to the heavens and quickens their pace, knowing that the town is only a short distance away. He is not excited to see Verkhnyaya Pyshma, but he is excited to get to the inn and into a room.

When they begin to walk past the houses on the outskirts of town, Patrik tenses, fingers digging dangerously into Jonathan’s arm. Jonathan keeps his head straight and their pace quick but leisurely, trying not to draw too much attention to them. Patrik looks strange in his oversized clothes, old and dirty, with the scarf wrapped around his head, but he plays his part when an old man stops in the road to stare.

He smiles prettily at the man, eyes going wide and blank, almost childlike. He even drools on himself a bit, opening his mouth like a fish. The old man stares for a while longer before he gives Jonathan a sympathetic look, tipping his hat. Jonathan lets out a breath of relief, giving Patrik’s hand a squeeze.

When they finally reach the inn, Patrik has perfected his simple role. He slips from Jonathan’s grasp when the door closes behind them, immediately stumbling to the desk where the clerk is sitting. He smiles prettily at the old woman, mouth opening and closing repeatedly.

The old woman sneers at Patrik at first, standing to shoo him away.

“ _Moya radost_ ,” Jonathan says gently, coming up behind Patrik and softly pulling his hands away from the desk. Patrik turns to look at him, eyes wide but mostly blank. He moans softly, confusedly.

“Please excuse him,” Jonathan says to the clerk. “He is not—”

The old woman’s expression has softened. She nods, looking apologetic and sympathetic. “Do you need a room?”

Patrik turns back to the woman. His hood has slipped, revealing the bruises on his face. She grimaces, eyes sweeping back and forth between them, concerned.

“Our father,” Jonathan says suddenly, drawing the woman’s attention away from Patrik. “He was not very kind. Alexei could not defend himself and I could not always be there to defend him.” He pauses. “Or mother.” It suddenly stings to say those words, the truth of his childhood spilling from his mouth too easily.

“Oh my,” says the clerk, eyes a bit glossy. “You poor things.”

Jonathan nods, trying to convey as much grief as he can in one look. “It has been hard, _zhensheenah_. Alexei and I are very tired. We would only like to rest for a night.”

“Yes, of course,” says the clerk, nodding to herself as she turns behind the desk to grab a key off the wall. “There is only the matter of payment, _gohspodzin_.”

“Of course, of course.” Jonathan reaches into his pocket, pulling out his money clip. Patrik immediately reaches for it like a child.

“I am afraid,” Jonathan says, pulling the clip from Patrik’s grasp, “that we do not have much money.” He tries to make himself look as meek and sad looking as possible. They have the jewels, but he does not want to part with them, not until he can pawn a majority of the gems off for a higher profit.

“It is alright dear,” says the clerk, taking what little money they have. “Do not worry. Take your brother to rest.” She smiles gently, reaching across the desk to pat Patrik’s hand. “Dinner is served promptly at seven.”

Jonathan smiles his thanks, sighing in relief. “ _Bagodarju vas_.” He takes the key, handing it to Patrik, who grins wide and prettily at the clerk. She smiles adoringly at Patrik as they leave the lobby, undoubtedly charmed. Jonathan rolls his eyes when they are at of eyesight.

Patrik collapses on the bed as soon as they are in their room, pulling off his hood as he goes down. He looks exhausted as he stretches out, eyes scrunched in pain as he tries to breathe through the worst of it.

“You were good today, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, taking a cautious seat at the foot of the bed. He takes Patrik’s leg gently, lying it across his lap to gently remove one shoe and then the other. Patrik groans when he sets his legs back down.

There are tears in his eyes when he looks at Jonathan. “It hurts, Jonny,” he says, shortening Jonathan’s name into an affectionate one, just like that. Jonathan is momentarily taken aback, not because he objects to being given a nickname, but because he never thought Patrik would ever like him enough to give him one. He’s been calling Patrik “little one” since he rescued the boy only because it seemed appropriate; it helped him separate the boy in front of him from the boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Also, Patrik _is_ a little one.

He runs his finger over Patrik’s bruised ankle, touch as light as a feather. He never considered bruises to be a painful thing. Growing up and working on the farm, being bombarded in the trenches—he always had bruises, and even though at times they ached, they never actually _hurt_ , but it must be different for Patrik; he’s covered from head to toe in them. Even his bones probably bare bruises.

He runs his hand over Patrik’s hip. “Here, you must rest now.”

Together they carefully remove Patrik’s clothes, leaving him in nothing but his underwear. He crawls under the covers, trying his best to lie as still as possible.

Jonathan rids himself of his shirt, washing his face at the lone sink in the room. There is no hot water, and the toilet is a shared one at the end of the hall, but at least they are not in the cabin or at the Ipatiev House, and the elderly clerk does not seem suspicious of them.

“Earlier,” Patrik says from under the covers. “What you said to the lady. It’s true?”

Jonathan looks at Patrik over his shoulder in the mirror.

Patrik’s face is a grimace, but he still looks curious. “About your papa.”

Jonathan sighs, wiping his face with a cloth before he turns to face Patrik. “My father was not like your father.”

Patrik frowns. Jonathan shakes his head. “For what qualities your father lacked as an emperor, he made up for them in being your father. It was obvious how much he loved you and your sisters and your mother.”

Patrik looks crestfallen, but for once it doesn’t seem to be caused by his grief. He looks sad for Jonathan, hand curled up near his face, eyes a little teary.

“Do not cry, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says, ridding himself of his boots. “He is not worth your tears.”

“And your mama? Brother?” Patrik asks when Jonathan takes a seat on the bed.

“You are very nosey tonight, _malysh_.”

Patrik shrinks, closing his mouth. Jonathan sighs. He knows almost everything there is to know about this boy, it is only right, he thinks, to give him some information. “My mother lives in Paris. Or that’s where she said she was going. I haven’t seen her since I was a child.”

“And brother?”

“He died in the war.”

Patrik falls silent. He reaches out, touching Jonathan’s hip comfortingly. “Is your papa still—?”

“He is dead too.” Jonathan does not offer that he murdered the man outside of the very cabin they took refuge in, or at one point that Patrik _literally_ pissed on his grave. He does not need to know.

“Oh,” the boy says quietly.

Jonathan ignores him, reaching into their pack for the rest of their meat. Tomorrow they will get bread and cheese before the train. He gives the food to Patrik, allowing the boy to eat his fill before he consumes the rest.

He takes the time to fish the knife out of the pack, placing it under his pillow before he double checks that the door is locked and sheds his trousers, climbing into bed.

Patrik, for once, has not curled himself into a ball. He is watching Jonathan, eyes sweeping across his face. “We have each other,” he says very suddenly.

“I wanted your father dead,” Jonathan answers. He does not know what else to say.

Patrik takes a deep breath, reaching across the small distance between them to touch Jonathan’s bare side. His fingers are warm, fingernails dragging across his skin. “I know,” he says very seriously. “But now, we have each other.”

Jonathan can do nothing but stare at the boy. This sweet, _naïve_ , boy whose whole life now rests solely in his hands. This boy who he has grown so fond of over the past two days, this boy who despite his incredible grief and pain is willing to travel over four thousand kilometers to start a whole new life when he could so easily throw himself in front of the nearest car or slit his wrist. This boy with the resilience of men twice his age.

“We have each other now,” Patrik says, sounding older than he really is. “We will go to Paris together.”

“Yes,” Jonathan agrees because there is nothing else that he can say. “We have each other.”

Patrik smiles, light and small, not meeting his eyes. He turns over gingerly, curling himself into a ball.

Jonathan can do nothing but lie there and stare at the ceiling until exhaustion takes over.

He is woken in the middle of the night quite like he was the night before, except Patrik is groaning loudly, head thrashing back and forth.

He doesn’t want to wake their neighbors and draw any attention to them, so he pulls Patrik to him, wrapping the boy in a bear hug, hand loosely covering his mouth.

Patrik startles awake underneath him, struggling desperately to free himself. “Hush, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan whispers harshly in his ear. “It is only me.”

It takes a few moments, but Patrik stops moving, breathing harshly against Jonathan’s hand. When Jonathan is sure that he won’t make any noise, he pulls his hand away, keeping his grip on Patrik. “Go back to sleep.”

“I see them,” Patrik says very quietly into the night.

Jonathan loosens his grip, making himself more comfortable. “I used to dream of my companions in the trenches. It never goes away, _malysh_. You must learn to live with the nightmares.”

Patrik sobs quietly. Jonathan strokes his back until the boy falls back asleep.

By morning Patrik has slipped from his grip, curled tightly into a ball against the wall despite the pain it must be causing him, groaning quietly in his sleep.

Jonathan slips free from bed, dressing quickly in the dim light from the window. He could easily slip away now, take the jewels and the knife and board the next train to Perm, leaving Patrik’s fate in the hands of God, but even the thought of it makes him sick. Patrik is the last symbol or tsarist Russia, and, yet, Jonathan cannot leave him to die.

It is still early, and Patrik is groaning quietly, not loud enough to rouse suspicion. It would be easier to retrieve refreshments and their tickets without him—it would save the boy acting like a fool and any unnecessary walking, along with avoiding a thousand stares and questions. Jonathan decides to leave Patrik; he will be back before the boy awakes.

The elderly clerk is still behind the desk when he reaches the lobby. “Good morning,” he says, giving her his most charming smile.

She smiles tiredly back at him. “How is Alexei?”

That sweet boy has undoubtedly charmed the woman. Jonathan wants to roll his eyes, but he resists. “He is still asleep. It is easier to do some tasks without him.”

The clerk nods knowingly. “My son—he was.”

Jonathan immediately feels guilty for lying to the poor woman. He smiles sympathetic at her. “I am sure he was glad to have you as a mother.”

The woman smiles kindly at him. “I will listen for him, if he wakes.”

Jonathan doesn’t want the woman snooping about, but it would be more suspicious to turn down the help. “Thank you,” he says, giving her another smile before he slips from the inn.

It is easy to secure what he needs. He collects bread and cheese from the bakery, keeping his head low and paying without any bargaining. It is suspiciously quiet in town, and suspiciously void of any military. Something has happened.

It’s the clerk at the train station who finally reveals the reason for the quietness. “The White Army took Yekaterinburg,” he explains when Jonathan asks for two tickets to Perm. “We do not know how far the train will make it.”

Jonathan is momentarily shocked into stillness. He knew that the White Army was close. Yurovsky had urged them in the days leading up to the execution to be vigilant; to be ready to lay down arms for their cause. The White Army’s presence, Yurovsky had claimed, was one of the main reasons why the tsar had had to die so urgently.

If only the White Army had taken Yekaterinburg two days earlier.

Jonathan shakes his head to clear the thought. If the White Army had struck earlier, then at this very moment he would be dead and the monarchists would be working to put Nikolai Alexandrovich back on the throne.

But his _malysh_ wouldn’t be suffering so much.

“ _Gohspodzin_ ,” the clerk insists. “Do you want the tickets or not?”

The White Army has probably found the carnage of the basement, and perhaps the bodies too. They must be aware that Patrik is missing. They will be heading to Verkhnyaya Pyshma soon.

Jonathan will not give Patrik back so easily.

“ _Da_ ,” he agrees. “Two tickets.” He takes a gem from his pocket, one of which he snuck out of the tin so quietly this morning. It is a dangerous thing to bargain with this close to Yekaterinburg, but Patrik’s body cannot hold out in standard class. “First class.”

The clerk takes the jewel suspiciously. For a moment all he does is roll it between his fingers, but finally he nods, stamping two tickets and handing them over. “Two first class tickets to Perm.”

Jonathan hurries back to the inn. The elderly clerk is behind her desk, but he does not stop to greet her. He wants to get Patrik on the train and out of Verkhnyaya Pyshma as soon as possible.

“ _Malysh_ ,” he says as he opens the door. “Get dressed. We leave now.” He says this without really looking at Patrik, instead busying himself with locking the door.

Patrik sobs.

When Jonathan takes a moment to turn and look at him, he finds Patrik sat up in bed, crying.

“We do not have time for your tears,” Jonathan snaps, walking over to the bed to stuff their cheese and bread inside their pack. “You can cry on the train.”

“You left me.”

Jonathan pauses, lifting his head. “ _Malysh_ —”

“You _left_ me,” Patrik cries, angry tears rolling down his cheeks. He looks anguished and miserable, their knife tucked up in his hand against his chest. “You _**left**_ me.”

“I went to get our tickets and food.”

Patrik shakes his head, shoulders rolling with his sobs. “I wake and you’re gone. I thought—”

And _oh_ , Jonathan hadn’t thought of the possibility of Patrik waking while he was gone.

He hadn’t thought that Patrik would wake to find him gone and think the worst.

“ _Malysh_ ,” he says quietly.

Patrik sobs. “I was _alone_.”

“I am sorry,” Jonathan says, feeling the guilt clutch his heart tight. “I thought you would still be asleep when I returned.”

Suddenly Patrik lurches forward, wrapping his arms around Jonathan’s shoulders, the knife clambering to the ground.

Jonathan stands frozen for a moment, surprised by this affection, but he soon wraps his arms around Patrik’s waist. “I am sorry,” he says, pulling the boy closer. “Forgive me, _malysh_. I wasn’t thinking.”

Patrik does not say that Jonathan is forgiven, but he pulls away, nodding and wiping at his eyes with the back of his arm.

“You must get dressed now,” Jonathan says to break the silence, wiping a tear from under Patrik’s eye. “We must leave now.”

Patrik gets dressed shakily and slowly. He doesn’t seem as pained as he was the night before, but the pain will soon set in. He wraps the scarf around his head loosely, taking Jonathan’s arm when it’s offered.

“Off so soon?” the clerk asks when they reach the lobby, actually looking displeased to see them go.

Patrik grins at her, smile wide and dumb.

“It’s better to move while he’s in a good mood,” Jonathan explains.

The clerk nods knowingly. She fishes a sweet out of her pocket, handing it to Patrik, who takes it greedily. He probably hasn’t had a sweet since he was forced to leave Saint Petersburg. “Be safe,” she says so motherly that Jonathan wants to kiss her cheek.

It is still very quiet in the streets. People have either fled the White Army’s approach, or have gone to join their forces. It makes it easier for them to walk through the streets unnoticed.

Jonathan makes sure they bypass the ticket booth when they arrive at the station, instead heading straight for a conductor. They’re an hour early for the train’s departure, but the conductor takes one look at Patrik, who’s starting to moan and drool, and lets them on, personally escorting them to their compartment.

There is nothing truly luxurious about the compartment, but it is private, and there are cushions on the long benches for Patrik to stretch out on. Hopefully the cushions will provide some sort of comfort from the constant swaying and bumping as the train moves.

Patrik immediately toes off his shoes and crawls onto a bench, spreading out.

“Are you hungry?” Jonathan asks, settling onto the opposite bench.

Patrik shakes his head. “How long is the journey?”

“Half a day.”

Jonathan fails to mention that they might me stopped along the way. There is no point in frightening the boy, or giving him false hope, either. Jonathan has no plans on giving up the former tsesarevich, not to the Bolsheviks or to the White Army. He will not see a new tsar on the throne, not even one as small and bright as Patrik.

Patrik shifts on the bench, looking uncomfortable.

Jonathan tries to imagine Patrik sitting regal on his golden throne, the double-headed eagle behind him, a crown of jewels upon his head. He knows immediately that Patrik would be miserable, not only from the always present bruises littering his body, but also from the knowledge that the crown upon his head was only his because of his father’s execution.

The image makes Jonathan uncomfortable suddenly, something akin to anger settling low in his stomach. He can imagine Patrik’s miserable face so well because he has become accustomed to seeing it; even when Patrik is trying his best to smile, he is always, _always_ so unhappy.

He will not give Patrik back, he realizes quite unexpectedly, because something inside of him does not wish to see the boy continue to be so miserable. He wouldn’t care less who the White Army would put upon the throne, as long as it _wasn’t_ Patrik, not because he so desperately wants the end of the Romanov Dynasty, but because he knows how miserable it would make Patrik to be there.

He tries to hate the boy as Patrik yawns, grimacing as the engine whistles and the train lurches forward, signaling their departure, but his mind and body refuse to get heated. There is nothing inside of him but unreasonable fondness and protectiveness.

He will see Patrik to Paris, and even after that, he will see Patrik into whatever future God has in store for them.

Patrik flutters his eyelashes at him, eyes heavy and pretty, and Jonathan knows that things will be okay.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Their trip to Perm is blessedly uneventful.

Jonathan spends most of it in anxious anticipation, waiting for the train to come to a slow stop in the middle of nowhere, but it continues on without a hitch, Patrik blissfully unaware as he tries to sleep. The train ride is bumpy, rattling his bones uncomfortably. Every time he just about falls asleep, he lurches awake, looking wretched. He spends most of the trip in excorticating pain, his scarf stuffed into his mouth to keep from crying out too loudly.

Jonathan only planned for them to spend one night in Perm before catching the train to Saint Petersburg, but it becomes blatantly apparent as they settle into their hotel room for the night, that Patrik’s body cannot take another train ride so soon.

If his body was littered _before_ , it is now covered, almost every inch a molten mix of yellow and blue and purple and green, old and new. Every movement seems to cause him indescribable pain, his body shaking uncontrollably as he lies on the bed. He’s developed a fever from the pain now too, his lithe body looking sickly as he looks at Jonathan with wet eyes, curled in on himself despite how bad it is for his joints.

Jonathan strokes Patrik’s hair comfortingly, crouching in front of him. “I will fetch you something to ease the pain, but you must stay here.”

Patrik shakes his head, but even that causes him pain.

“I will come back,” Jonathan promises, _knowing_ that is the route of Patrik’s protests. “I have always come back for you.”

Patrik shakes his head again, eyes wet and glossy. “ _Jonny_.” He paints a pathetic picture, but he will only get worse if Jonathan does not find something to ease his pain.

“I will be right back,” he promises again, steeling himself against Patrik’s pained whimpers as he exits their room, locking the door behind him. It pains him to leave Patrik while he’s in such a vulnerable state, but he cannot allow Patrik to suffer through the night, or into the coming days.

The heroin is easy to find, but it’s more expensive here than it is in Verkhnyaya Pyshma or even Yekaterinburg. He has to fork over the majority of his rubbles and a gem, but when he returns to their room, he has two vials of heroin, enough to last them the rest of their journey if Patrik doesn’t form a habit. Jonathan’s seen what heroin can do to good men, but it’s less addictive than morphine, and Patrik needs it.

Patrik is as he left him, dejected as he lies there, body still shaking in pain, but he’s rid himself of his shirt and trousers, his fever probably making him feel too hot in the too small room. Jonathan opens a window to let in some fresh air before he grabs a spoon from the tea he ordered after their arrival, banging it gently against the edge of the cup to clear it of tea.

It’s an agonizing ordeal on both of their parts to get Patrik sitting up. He cries in pain, cursing at Jonathan meanly, but Jonathan ignores him. “You will feel better soon enough, _malysh_.”

He pours the heroin onto the spoon, just like the nurses used to do on the front. It tastes horrible, Jonathan knows from experience, but Patrik swallows it down greedily, spitting some back up when the taste catches up to him. He swallows the cold tea Jonathan offers greedily too before he collapses sideways.

It only takes a few minutes for the heroin to kick in. Patrik sighs happily, stretching his legs out despite how much pain it would have caused him to do so before. He smiles dopily at Jonathan, lips stretched up to his ears.

“Happy now, are we?” Jonathan says, feeling compelled to reach out and attempt to ruffle what little hair Patrik has left. It’s a shame that his curls had to go, but they’ll grow back eventually, healthier this time around.

Patrick turns his head into his touch, eyes closed, smiling like a Cheshire cat. This is the most relaxed Jonathan’s ever seen him, even before the attempted execution. Patrik had arrived at the Ipatiev House in a wheelchair, eyes sunken and hollow, the fate of the world resting upon his shoulders. He had sat silently in his bed, staring out at the world blankly for the first few weeks of his occupation, until the hollowness had slowly given way to weak defiance. He had only just left the need to use his wheelchair when his execution had been ordered.

“ _Lapa_ ,” Patrik purrs, the endearment rolling off his tongue sweetly.

“Ah,” Jonathan says, toeing off his shoes. “So you do like me, _malysh_.”

Patrik frowns. “You wanted me dead.”

Jonathan stands, heading to the lone washbasin. They still have no hot water, but he cannot stand to go another day without a wash. There is a shared lavatory and bathroom just down the hall, but he cannot leave Patrik as high as a kite, or risk taking him to the bathroom for too long either. Not only is Patrik bruised all over, raising suspicion, but he is _supposed_ to be a simpleton. His tongue is loose right now, and he will blow their cover.

“I did,” he agrees, running the water before he removes his shirt and trousers and underwear, draping them over a nearby chair. He can feel Patrik’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t care. He needs to wash the grime from his body. Patrik should really bathe too, but the boy looks content to laze in his underwear. Perhaps the drugs will eventually knock Patrik out, and they’ll both be able to sleep through the night.

Jonathan wets a cloth before he covers it with soap. He runs the cloth over his chest and under his armpits, scrubbing away the grime and dirt. He becomes distracted in his task, washing himself from head to toe, feeling instant relief when he’s finished. He deposits the cloth in the washbasin, catching Patrik’s eye in the mirror.

Patrik has been watching him. There’s a tint of pink across his nose and in his cheeks, his mouth parted slightly. He’s curled up on himself, looking like a spoilt house cat as he lies there. When he notices that Jonathan is watching, he startles, turning quickly on his side.

“Have you ever seen another man naked, _malysh_?”

“I do not like you.”

Jonathan snorts a laugh, using a dry cloth to wipe the water from his body. There had been rumors circling about Moscow before the revolution that the tsesarevich had shown little interest in girls, no matter which princess had been paraded before him, but Patrik is a boy of seventeen, almost eighteen; what he wants one moment is different from what he wants the next. He’s still very much a teenager— _anyone_ naked and wet probably sends his hormones into overdrive.

“It is okay to look, _malysh_.”

Patrik refuses to face him. “You are an _ass_.”

Jonathan laughs, pulling on his underwear. “It is your turn.”

“I do not wish to.”

“Now you are being a brat, _malysh_. You must bathe.”

Patrik turns on the bed quickly, face twisted into a glare. He is moving much faster than he really should. When he comes down from his high, his pain will be ten times worse; this constant jerking about, even on a soft bed, will probably cause him to bruise.

He stumbles from the bed like a brat, shouldering past Jonathan to grab the cloth and wash himself. Jonathan watches him for a moment, amused as he settles onto the bed. “Don’t forget to wash behind your ears.”

Patrik turns sharply to look at him, sneering, but he does as told, swiping the cloth behind his ears before he returns to wiping his chest. He hesitates when it comes to removing his underwear.

“It is nothing I haven’t seen before,” Jonathan comments idly.

Patrik was not this shy when he bathed in the stream near the cabin. He had stripped then happily, washing himself of blood while Jonathan took care of his clothes. Now he hesitates, pink flushing across his cheeks and down his collarbone. Jonathan stops watching to give him some privacy, turning on his side and feigning sleep.

Patrik finishes quickly, returning to the bed in a hurry. He climbs over Jonathan awkwardly, settling into the space closest to the wall, wincing. The euphoria from the heroin is starting to finally come down, but Jonathan will not give him more, not until tomorrow.

Jonathan reaches over, shutting off the light.

It is so quiet between them that he believes that Patrik has fallen asleep, but eventually the boy breaks the silence. “I have never seen anyone naked.”

Jonathan is not surprised. Patrik is a teenager, and was the long-sought after tsesarevich. No moment of his life has ever been spent alone. There has never been a chance for him to see a man, let alone a woman, naked.

“Do you have a wife?” Patrik asks into the dark.

“No.”

Patrik is silent for only a moment. “A lover?”

“What does it matter to you, _malysh_?”

Silence stretches out between them. Jonathan closes his eyes, willing himself to sleep. Tomorrow they will see how Patrik is feeling without the heroin and decide when they shall leave.

“Will I have my own family?”

Patrik’s voice is small in the dark, almost inaudible. He’s close to Jonathan, radiating body heat. It’s enough to make the room feel stuffy.

“Is that what you want?”

Patrik is quiet, shifting about to get comfortable. “No,” he finally settles on, breathing heavily through his nose. Jonathan suspects that he is trying not to cry. “I couldn’t—”

“You need more medicine,” Jonathan interrupts, suddenly feeling unable to deal with Patrik’s emotional needs. He’s playing with fire by giving Patrik more heroin, but Patrik doesn’t protest as he pours the liquid onto a spoon. It’s less than half of what he took only an hour earlier, but he swallows it down, blanching before he takes a sip of cold tea.

He lies there quietly, his dopey smile returning eventually, the drug doing it’s trick. He’s high as a kite, numb to any feelings or pain. It doesn’t take long for the euphoria and numbness to knock him out, the dopey smile still on his face.

Jonathan feels guilty as he crawls from bed, stuffing the heroin at the bottom of their pack. He shouldn’t drug Patrik just to get him to sleep—that’s not _why_ he fetched the drug—but Patrik’s emotional turmoil is not something he feels equipped to deal with tonight. He’s not truly equipped to deal with it on _any_ night, but Patrik’s prying into a future that he cannot guarantee has made him uncomfortable.

He does not know what they will do once they reach Paris.

He can at least work with his hands. Factory jobs will be easy to come by in Paris, and the outlining farms are always looking for men to work, now that most have been killed or gravely injured in the war. Patrik, on the other hand, is useless. He has never had to work for anything in his entire life. His hands are delicate and his body weak. He cannot work the fields, and unless he finds women’s work, he will be useless in the factories. Unless Patrik has some hidden, valuable talent, he will be relying on Jonathan—and his gems—to support him for the rest of his life.

Even if Patrik wanted a family, which Jonathan has an inkling that he _will_ eventually, once the pain of his loss fades into a dull ache, it would be nearly impossible. Patrik’s secret must _stay_ a secret, even after they leave Russia. He has extended family across Europe that would surely do anything to put him back on the throne, and Jonathan will not allow that to happen. Not for Russia, and not for Patrik’s own sake. Whoever Patrik decides to start a family with will never know who he truly is, and he will have to live with lying to her for the rest of his life. Jonathan already knows that the boy will never be able to keep that secret.

It feels almost wrong to deny Patrik a family; he would probably make beautiful children if ever given the chance. Little blond cherubs with wide blue eyes and cupid bow lips that would act like little princes and princesses, unknowing that they were actually of royal blood. Patrik has probably inherited the only good traits that Nikolai Alexandrovich ever possessed too—love and dedication to his family.

Jonathan has denied himself a family because his genes will not carry on anything good. His mother was a French whore and his father an abusive, Russian drunk. Nothing good will come from any children he sires, even if he were to fuck a saint. He’s accepted the fact that he will never have children of his own, God willing. Patrik, on the other hand, must learn to accept that fact. The only family he will ever have now is Jonathan, whether he grows to like or even love him. There no other options.

He reaches out, running his hand over Patrik’s hair. The short ends prick the palm of his hand.

It feels wrong to deny Patrik anything.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Patrik blessedly sleeps through the night, but he wakes in the early hours of the morning, moaning in pain. He needs Jonathan’s help to reach the lavatory, and then more help to crawl back into bed where he immediately curls himself up into a ball, whimpering feverishly. They will not be able to ride a train today, or even tomorrow. Jonathan pushed Patrik too far, and now they must live with the consequences.

He gives Patrik the smallest dose of heroin, but it does little to ease his suffering. He continues to shake throughout the morning, sweating profusely. Jonathan wipes his forehead and chest with a wet cloth to help ease his fever and try to keep him clean, but it’s to little effect. By late morning he’s sweated so much that Jonathan is forced to remove the sheets from the bed and give the boy more heroin. The heroin settles Patrick and lures him into a quiet sleep, so quiet that Jonathan is able to leave the room to fetch bread and cheese and return without Patrik noticing that he left.

It feels cruel to wake him, but food will hopefully make Patrik feel better. He’s a bit loopy when he wakes, blinking dizzily, needing a few minutes to come back to reality. “ _Lapa_ ,” he says, voice low and sweet, sleepy.

Jonathan wipes sweat from Patrik’s brow. “I am glad you still like me.”

“I always like you,” Patrik mumbles, flopping over sideways, taking into no account the state of his body. “Even in—”

Jonathan takes him by the shoulders, carefully arranging Patrik so that he’s sitting against the headboard and likely not to cause himself any further damage. “You did not know me then.”

Patrik shakes his head, taking the bread and cheese from Jonathan hungrily. “You let me look out the window.” It’s heartbreaking to hear those words, to know that the measure of kindness Patrik used is to judge his character was something as simple as being allowed to look out a window, a window, of course, that no one in the Romanov family was supposed to look out of, in case anyone walking down the street saw their faces, despite the fact that all of Yekaterinburg already knew that they inhabited the Ipatiev House.

Jonathan hadn’t been the only guard to let Patrik and his sisters look out the window. Every guard in the Ipatiev House, besides Yurovsky and Ermakov, had had a soft spot for the tsesarevich and the grand duchesses. Despite their lineage, despite who their mother and father were, _despite_ their Romanov name, one couldn’t help but _feel_ for the Romanov children. They were unwilling victims in their father’s downfall, and paid the ultimate price for his mistakes.

Nikolai Alexandrovich might not have pulled the trigger, but his children’s blood is on his hands. Jonathan hopes that there is no entrance into Heaven for Nikolai Alexandrovich.

Patrik finishes eating before he slides down to lay his head on the pillow. He looks so weak lying there, body pale and covered in bruises, still so skinny. Jonathan reaches out, running his hand comfortingly over Patrik’s short hair. He feels regret at cutting off the blond locks, but it is only hair, and it will grow back once Patrik is somewhere safe and eating actual meals and not just cheap bread and cheese.

“Will you miss it?”

“Hmm?”

“Russia,” Patrik clarifies quietly, closing his eyes and turning his head into Jonathan’s touch, doing his best impression of an lazy, mangy, cat.

Jonathan settles more firmly on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. Patrick’s head is resting near his thigh, making it easier to keep running his hand back and forth over his head. “During the war, all I wanted was to go home,” he says, trying not to think of the trenches, of the smell of death and blood, of shit and piss, of the agonizing noise of men dying. He’s been able to stuff those memories deep down over the past few months; he would be useless to Patrik if they came welling back up now. “And when I got home, all I wanted was to create a new Russia.” He feels it when Patrik tenses, but he soothes him by rubbing his thumb against his temple. “But now, I don’t think I will ever mourn this place.”

Patrik’s eyes flutter open. “I did not know that our country was so big, not until we were moved to Tobolsk.” He scrunches his face, looking confused as he speaks. “I don’t think Papa even knew. We lived in palaces and rode yachts around the Baltic, but I never went further than Moscow.” He plays with the material of Jonathan’s pant leg, face still confused. “I would not have made a good tsar.”

No Romanov has ever been a good tsar, but Jonathan keeps that comment to himself. “You would have done the best that you could.” Maybe if things had been different, _maybe_ Patrik would have made a good tsar, better than his father. Perhaps he would have been the emperor to realize that his people were truly suffering and make a genuine change, and not elect a duma that would be dissolved within weeks. But maybe Patrik would have been even worse than his father, easily taken advantage of because of his sickness, dominated by a foreign wife mirroring his own mother.

These are things that they will never know.

Patrik cannot be returned to his throne; it would mean the death of the revolution, and even the death of Patrik. Not even sitting upon a cushioned throne would keep him alive for very long. The stress of putting back together a nation torn apart by civil war would surely kill him.

They sit together quietly, Jonathan’s hand paused on Patrick’s head until he falls back asleep, his pain seeming at least manageable now. All this sleeping will come back to bite them in the ass later—Patrick won’t be able to sleep tonight, his body wired up from the constant napping, but there’s little else that they can do.

When Patrik’s breathing turns itself into quiet snoring, Jonathan detangles himself. He spent many hours entertaining himself in the Ipatiev House with nothing to do, but with the little freedom he has, he _wants_ to find something to do. He slips from the room easily, stopping to take a piss before heading into the street. Patrick is not out enough for him to sleep through Jonathan going far, so he uses the little change that he has to buy a newspaper from a boy on the corner.

Splashed across the front page is the announcement of Nikolai Alexandrovich’s execution, the pressure from the Czechoslovaks and the White Army the only explanation for the former tsar’s death. There is no mention of the fate of the grand duchesses, but according to the national press, the tsarevich and tsarina have been taken to “somewhere safe”.

It’s an outright lie, but Jonathan expected no less from Lenin. There are too many powers raging at war for the Bolsheviks to admit that they executed the entire family. Alexandra Feodorovna was a German princess before she was the tsarina of Russia. All of royal Europe is looking at Russia, wondering the fate of Alexandra Feodorovna and her children. If the Germans find out the real fate of Alexandra Feodorovna and her “German” children, then the weak peace treaty between Germany and Russia will crumble.

Jonathan immediately wants to throw the newspaper away and find something else to entertain himself with, but he folds it under his arm and returns to their room. Patrik has a right to know the lies being told of his demise.

Patrik is still asleep when he returns, but it doesn’t take long for him to wake from his nap. He’s in pain again, twisting about to get comfortable, but he doesn’t seem to be in as _much_ pain as this morning. Jonathan helps him to go to the lavatory and drink a glass of water before he decides to give Patrik the newspaper.

Patrik reads the paper quietly, his eyes brimming with tears, but he is quick to wipe them away. “They were not buried.”

Ermakov and Yurovsky would not have given the royal family any sort of respectable burial. Yurovsky had mentioned a mine shaft in passing only a few days before the execution, and with the way Ermakov had violated the tsarina’s body just after, Jonathan already knows that no respects were paid to their bodies.

“No, _malysh_.”

Patrik takes the newspaper, folding it back properly before he folds it in half, hiding the headline. “One day I will come home and bury them properly.”

Jonathan takes the paper, throwing it away immediately. There is no point in keeping it now.

Patrik sits quietly, staring out the window. Jonathan offers no comfort other than to sit in the chair opposite him, quietly offering his support.

He will _never_ apologize for the death of the tsar, but he can feel remorse for the way that the man and his family were killed, and he can feel sorrow for the pain that Patrik is suffering. He remembers how gut wrenching it had been to receive the news of David’s death. He had felt nothing but pain, like someone had stabbed him repeatedly in the heart, and then nothing but numbness as he had drunk himself into a stupor every night.

He had been discharged from the military not because of an injury, or because he was a poor soldier. He had been discharged for being a drunk, just like his father. The revolution had been the only thing to give him something to fixate on other than his brother’s death.

“Will it ever stop?” Patrik asks, eyes sharp and wet when he looks at Jonathan. There is such misery etched across his face. It pulls at something inside of Jonathan, making it hard for him to resist the urge to go to Patrik and wrap him in his arms.

“The pain never goes away, _malysh_ ,” he says, trying not to relive the pain of losing David. He clears his throat, willing those memories to disappear. Patrik’s face is twisted into agony, his unhappiness looking worse with his bruises. “But you learn to live with it.”

“I will become tsar,” Patrik spits, voice angry, the words coming out like venom. It’s the angriest Jonathan has ever heard the boy. “And I will crush their skulls with my bare hands.”

Patrik’s hands are too weak, his spirit too kind to kill another man, even his family’s executioners, but Jonathan lets him have his anger. He sits quietly, watching Patrick breathe heavily, sniffling to keep himself from crying. He’s angry, oh so angry, that sorrow finally giving way from uncontrollable anguish to fury.

Patrik eye’s latch onto him immediately, wide and horrific against the back drop of his heavily bruised and swollen face. “You are _mine_ now.” His breath comes quickly, hissing out between his teeth. “You will remain at my side for _forever_.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“You are mine!” Patrik shouts, eyes gone impossibly wide, his breath labored as he stares at Jonathan. “You will not leave me! You are _mine_!” His voice breaks at the end, tears spilling from his eyes as he refuses to blink. “Mine!”

“Spoilt brat,” Jonathan says under his breath, quickly lurching forward to cover Patrik’s mouth with his hand, knowing instinctively that Patrik’s anger will quickly turn back to anguish. “Be _quiet_.” Patrik’s eyes are spilling fat tears down his cheeks and onto Jonathan’s hand as he begins to wail, fingers coming up to clutch at his arm.

“ _Shut up_!” Jonathan hisses in a whisper, afraid that Patrik’s shouting and wailing has aroused the suspicions of the other occupants of the hotel. “If you wish for me to be yours, you must shut up before we are caught!”

Patrik gasps behind his hand, his wailing now turned to sobs. He paints a miserable, pathetic picture. Jonathan wants to slap him to make him be quiet, but that will only make Patrik’s noises louder, and he doubts that he will be able to make any true effort to actually hurt him.

“I will be yours,” Jonathan spits, “if you just _shut up_!”

He keeps his hand against Patrik’s mouth, waiting for him to quiet down, and when Patrik does, he slowly removes his hand, ready to slam it back over Patrik’s mouth immediately if he begins to wail again. “Breathe,” he commands, watching Patrik’s chest continue to fall up and down rapidly. “You must breathe.”

“I do not want to be left again,” Patrick sobs, ignoring Jonathan’s instruction. “Everyone I love has left me.”

“That does not make me _yours_ ,” Jonathan says, meaning to grab Patrik by the wrist and remove his fingers from his arm, but the torment written across his face gives him pause. Everything Patrik has ever known has been violently torn from him. The only thing he has left now is Jonathan, and it’s obvious now that his biggest fear is not the Bolsheviks tearing down their door and dragging him to his death—his biggest fear is losing him. “It should _not_ make me yours.”

“But it _does_ ,” Patrik insists, tugging on his sleeve like an insolent child. “It _does_. You will be mine forever.”

Jonathan shakes his head. This is a promise that he cannot keep. When it comes down to the wire, he knows that he _must_ value his life above Patrik’s, but he knows too that he would forgo his own to keep the boy alive. He has sacrificed so much for him already; why not give his life away too? “You ask too much of me, _malysh_.”

“ _Please_ ,” Patrik begs, sounding like he’s grasping for straws. “Promise me.” He reaches out to grasp Jonathan’s hand, bringing it to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. “Promise me that you will stay by my side always.”

Jonathan wants to hate this boy. He wants to hit him and choke him, throw him in front of a firing squad and a train only because he knows how much he has scarified for Patrik and how much more he will continue to. “You are a _spoilt brat_ ,” he says, meaning for his voice to be vicious and harsh, but it comes out fond. Fond. He’s always so fond of this spoilt, sweet brat.

“Promise me,” Patrik demands, almost sweet with it as he looks up at him, eyes wide and wet. “Promise me that you will be mine forever, _lapa_.”

This is a promise that Jonathan should not be asked to keep, but he knows that he will. All they have now is each other. “I promise _malysh_ ,” he says, leaning forward into Patrik’s space until their faces are inches apart, “that I will be yours forever.” He closes the space between them, pressing his lips softly to Patrik’s.

Patrik gasps in surprise. He tenses up, and then immediately relaxes, sighing into the kiss dreamily. His lips are chapped, and his eyes closed. This is the first time that he’s ever been kissed.

Jonathan pulls away after a moment, refusing to deepen the kiss further. “I am yours forever, _malysh_.”

Patrik looks dazed. “You kissed me.”

“I did.” Jonathan can’t resist leaning in to capture Patrik’s mouth in another kiss, just as soft as the first. This time he presses his mouth more firmly against Patrik’s, feeling it when he gasps and his mouth opens. He’s inexperienced, mouth hanging open, but he doesn’t push Jonathan away. Instead he reaches out to touch his chest, fingers soft and hesitant.

Jonathan tugs at his bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth. Patrik moans, fingers digging into his shirt, movements confused and unsure, but he still doesn’t push Jonathan away. Instead he leans forward, trying to make the kiss deeper, but he still leaves his mouth open, not knowing what to do next.

Jonathan pulls away, breaking the kiss, but he leans forward, pressing his forehead against Patrik’s. He doesn’t know what brought him to kiss the boy, but he can’t bring himself to truly ponder the reason why. It just seemed like the most appropriate thing to do, given the circumstances.

Patrik is silent, breathing heavily, but there’s a little smile tugging at his lips, not quite meeting his eyes. “Men do not kiss other men.”

“Then I will not kiss you again,” Jonathan says, pulling away, but Patrik doesn’t let him get far.

He digs his fingers into Jonathan’s shirt, tugging him between his legs. “No!” he cries, and then immediately blushes in embarrassment, flushing across his collarbone and down his chest, refusing to meet Jonathan’s eye. Jonathan laughs, endeared, looking down briefly at where Patrik is half-hard in his trousers just from a few, simple kisses, but he keeps his hands above Patrik’s waist.

He’s fucked men before and enjoyed it, but Patrik is only a teenager, too young to really know what he wants, and too shy to ask for it, not that he believes that Patrik even _knows_ what to ask for. He’s been sheltered from the real world and indoctrinated in the church his entire life. All he probably knows about sex is what is necessary to produce a heir.

Jonathan feels sorry for an woman Patrik fucks.

“Men should not kiss other men,” Patrik says, face still flushed, but Jonathan doesn’t think that he’s blushing because of the sin of it, “but I want to kiss _you_.”

“You must rest now,” Jonathan says to Patrik’s obvious disappointment. His face drops in rejection, recoiling, but Jonathan leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth. “You will need to regain your strength.”

“My strength?” Patrik echoes, scrunching his nose. “To kiss?”

Jonathan laughs, freeing Patrik’s fingers from his shirt. “Those were not _real_ kisses, _malysh_.” He leans in, letting his lips brush against Patrik’s ear as he speaks. Patrik shudders, breathing hot air against his neck. “I will teach you what a real kiss means, once my hands won’t leave bruises on your hips.”

Patrik is breathing heavy, shaking. “I need to go to the lavatory,” he says suddenly, using the little strength he has to push Jonathan away, hurrying past him to exit the room, uncaring that he is only in his trousers.

Jonathan stifles his laughter as Patrik slams the door behind him, trying not to come across as cruel, but he’s delighted and amused by Patrik’s reaction. He remembers being a teenager once, and how just a gust of wind would excite and embarrass him.

When Patrik eventually returns, he’s still flushed red. He _glares_ at Jonathan, sulking like an insolent child as he limps across the floor, collapsing into the wooden chair. It’s highly uncomfortable for him, but he refuses to meet Jonathan’s eye and insists that the chair is fine, despite his obvious discomfort. Jonathan lets him be, relaxing on the bed to count the cracks on the ceiling until Patrik’s body can’t take sitting straight-back in the chair anymore.

He crawls onto the bed from the end near Jonathan’s feet, shaky as he collapses onto the mattress, pressed as far against the wall as he can, face still so red that it’s a miracle that he hasn’t fainted from lightheadedness, but it’s the most alive he’s been all day. With the color in his cheeks, the bruises don’t look _as_ bad, and it’s been a few hours since he’s had a dose of heroin. He seems to be getting better, but only time will tell. Tomorrow he could wake up in agony caused by all of his moving around today.

“I will not touch you if you don’t want me to,” Jonathan says after he shifts to get more comfortable and Patrik tries to scoot further away from him. There’s really no place for Patrik to go, and Jonathan’s particularly concerned that he’ll curl himself too tight and cause another injury.

Patrik is silent for a long moment. He lies there, poking at a strain on the mattress, still so flushed. “I am afraid,” he eventually says, absolutely _refusing_ to look at him, “of what will happen if you do.”

Jonathan turns on his side, sliding down until Patrik can’t avoid meeting his eyes. “I would not harm you, Patrik.”

Patrik searches his face. “It sounds strange to hear you say my name.”

“Patrik Nikolaevich,” Jonathan says, trying to convey the seriousness in his words without speaking too loudly. Who knows who might be listening at the door. “I will not harm you.”

“I own you,” Patrik says matter-of-factly, shrugging at the fact. “You cannot harm me.” That’s an idiotic outlook to have about a man who advocated for the death of his father, but Patrik probably knows that there would be no point in harming him _now_.

“You are an idiot.”

Patrik smiles, small and tight. He looks about the room, busying himself again with the stain on the mattress. Jonathan will have to run downstairs eventually and ask for a new sheet. “I am afraid of what my body will do when you touch me.”

Jonathan can’t help but smile at the admission. He wants to reach out and touch Patrik’s face, but he keeps his hands to himself. “You’ve never been touched before.”

Patrik tries not to look embarrassed as he nods, but it’s blatantly obvious that he’s still a virgin, and why wouldn’t he be? When would the most beloved and watched over boy in all of Russia find the time to bed a maiden— _or_ be bedded?

“I will not touch you in that way.”

Something in Patrik’s face falls, but he is quick to recover, licking his lips and pretending that he doesn’t care, but Jonathan knows that his words have managed to hurt him. He shifts, catching Patrik’s chin and forcing his head up just enough to make eye contact. “I will not touch you in that way until you want me to.”

Patrik searches his face, cheeks going bright red. “Heathen,” he says suddenly, turning away quickly to face the wall. Jonathan can see that the tips of his ears have gone bright pink from embarrassment. He wants to tease Patrik more, but he leaves the boy alone, lying back to count the cracks on the ceiling. It’s still far too early to call it a night, but there’s nothing else that he can do. If only they had cards.

Patrik is unusually quiet, but that quiet doesn’t last long. Eventually he turns himself back over, movements ginger. He just lies there for a while, eyes bouncing back and forth between Jonathan, the stain on the mattress, and the cracks in the ceiling.

“Ask your question,” Jonathan says when he can’t take the anxiety wafting off of Patrik any longer.

Patrik frowns. “I have no question.”

Jonathan lifts his eyebrows, incredulous. Patrik had been so very quiet only three days ago. Now it seems impossible that he _doesn’t_ have questions.

Jonathan lets the silence drag on between them, entertaining himself by tapping his foot in the air along to beats he makes up in his head. Waiting Patrik out works, because eventually the boy asks his question.

“You have fucked men?”

The vulgarity of it makes Jonathan drop his foot to the bed with a loud thud. Patrik isn’t even _blushing_ as he looks at him, waiting for his answer.

“Yes,” he answers, confused at how Patrik can turn as red as a rose at the thought of being kissed and touched, but remains pale and sickly at the thought of men fucking. He is a conundrum. “I have fucked men.”

Patrik shifts, twisting and shifting to make himself more comfortable. He’s breathing through his mouth, working through the pain. Today was supposed to be a day of rest, but Patrik has spent most of it throwing himself into fits. They will pay for this in the coming days. “And women?”

“Yes, _malysh_.”

There is a heavy pause.

“Which did you—”

“Like better?”

“ _Da_.”

“I like men and women. There is not one I like more than the other.”

Patrik licks his lips, going pensive and quiet. “I did not think it would ever matter to me. Mama and Papa would decide who I would marry.”

“Didn’t your parents marry for love?”

Patrik shrugs. “Grandpapa only allowed it because he was dying.”

Jonathan goes back to counting the cracks in the ceiling. There are fifty-seven of them. This building is old and quite muggy, and he’ll be glad to leave it in two days’ time—that is all he will allow for them before they must leave. They might be a half day’s train ride from Yekaterinburg, but that doesn’t mean that the Bolsheviks have stopped their search; he and Patrik won’t be safe until they’ve left Russia’s borders.

“This means now I may marry who I want.” Patrik’s voice is sad and low. He’s staring at the ceiling. It takes him a moment to tear his eyes away. “Perhaps that will be the silver lining in all of this tragedy.”

Patrik cannot truly mean that. Jonathan glances at him, trying to read his face, but there is nothing there but a blank sadness. _Perhaps_ it is a silver lining to be allowed to marry whoever he wants, but not at the cost of losing his entire family.

Jonathan licks his lips, leaving the boy to his thoughts.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

The next two days are spent much like the first.

Jonathan feeds Patrik a dose of heroin to help him sleep through the night, and each morning he wakes in pain, feverish and unhappy until Jonathan administrates another small dose. The light at the end of the tunnel is that Patrik’s face is starting to regain its color, and the bruises across his body are starting to fade.

His pain only seems to come in the mornings after his body has been in one position for too long, or if he does too much at once, but he spends the two days in bed resting, and Jonathan does nothing to excite or provoke him—he keeps his hands to himself, only assisting Patrik to the lavatory and shower in the morning when the pain in his body is too much.

Most importantly, he does not kiss Patrik.

He still has no idea why he kissed him in the first place, but why he does anything for the boy continues to be a mystery he doubts that he will ever be able to solve.

He cannot deny that Patrik, despite the bruises, is quite a beautiful young man. He has big blue eyes, cupid’s bow lips, sweeping blond eyelashes, and porcelain skin all balanced out by a strong, masculine jaw. He lacks the auburn coloring of his parents and siblings, and that has always set him apart and made him the most attractive of the Romanovs, even compared to his sisters, who were true beauties in their own right. He’s always been something pretty to look at, even when he was glaring from his sick bed in the Ipatiev House.

Jonathan has always loved pretty things. It’s unenviable that he would have fallen for Patrik’s charm and kissed him anyway. He would kiss Patrik again now, only because of the thrill of it, of the way Patrik turns beet red and undoubtedly shy, but getting him all worked up and stomping off to the lavatory will do nothing to help his body prepare for the long ride between Perm and Saint Petersburg.

Patrik does not attempt to kiss him, but he does look at Jonathan shyly, and calls him _lapa_ instead of Jonny or _gohspodzin_. There’s been a shift between them, and where Patrik always seemed willing to accept his affection, he seems more willing to give it now, too.

He touches Jonathan more often, little fleeting touches to his arm or his hip that don’t outwardly mean anything, not really, but to Jonathan they speak volumes. He has always touched Patrik because there is nothing Patrik can do to harm him or to push him away. He is stronger and larger and he has always been the one in control of their situation. But these innocent touches seem to convey an unspoken connection between them. Patrik’s touches say that he trusts Jonathan now, and not only because he has to, but because he _wants_ to.

Patrik seems on some level to understand the imbalance in their relationship and his place in it. He _knows_ even if he were to take the opportunity to stab Jonathan with their trusty knife and kill him, his only option afterward would be to slit his own wrists. His life rests solely in Jonathan’s hands. Patrik might have millions in the precious gems that saved his life, but he had, and continues to lack, any inkling of how the world works outside of palace walls. His life since the moment he was rescued has been Jonathan’s, and will continue to be his for the next several months, even _years_.

Jonathan has no idea how Patrik truly feels about their feeble relationship, or if these new touches are a product of Patrik actually _liking_ him or just merely accepting his fate. What Jonathan does know is that he hasn’t been touched so intimately by another person since the last time he hugged David, right before they had parted ways for the war. David had laughed nervously and taken him into a bone-crushing hug before he had kissed the side of his face and told him to stop looking so serious; they would see each other again in only a few months, once those pompous royals got their heads out of their asses.

David was the last person he had ever shown so much love and affection to, and now all that affection has been transferred to a boy who only a week ago he cared little for and wished nothing but misery upon. Maybe his weakness for Patrik has stemmed from the death of his beloved brother—he had spent years being David’s protector and caregiver.

They had had nothing but each other for years, and in those years Jonathan had found David’s need for constant affection annoying. David had hung all over him, had insisted on hugging and standing far too close; he had always gotten into Jonathan’s space, insisting on sharing the same bench and even bed at times.

It had taken his death for Jonathan to realize that David’s need for touch had come from their mother running off and their father’s nearly daily beatings. David had _yearned_ for his touch because Jonathan had been the only person who had ever truly loved him.

Maybe his affection for Patrik has developed out of his need to protect and care for someone who has no one else to do so. He helped to sow the roots of the situation that Patrik now finds himself in, and now reaps the rewards: the tsar is dead, there will be a government run by the people for the first time in a hundred years, and most importantly, he has Patrik’s undivided attention. He will never be able to truly experience Russia moving into a glorious new future, but at the end of the day, he has everything that he was yearning for, even if he didn’t realize that he was yearning for it.

He is an awful human being.

One day he will apologize to Patrik for all of this, but today is not that day.

He watches Patrik secure the scarf around his head, practicing his simple expressions in the mirror. His face is still so bruised, and his movements stiff, but they have no choice but to board the train. The longer they stay in Perm, the more chances they have of being caught.

They _must_ board the train today.

Patrik puts on a brave face as they leave their room, easily letting it slip into a blank expression as they make their way to the lobby. By the time they step out onto the street, Patrik is shaking, fingers dug tightly into Jonathan’s arm as they make their way towards the train station. Perm is busier than Yekaterinburg, and when they had first arrived, Patrik had been too distracted by the pain to notice.

“There are so many people,” he whispers as they make their way through the street, licking his lips nervously at every strange look they receive.

“Keep your head low, _malysh_. Allow me to do all of the talking.”

The train station is busier than the streets, thriving with people fleeing from the approaching White Army or simply going about their daily lives. The people pay them little attention as they arrive, too busy with their own lives to really notice two faces amongst the crowd.

There are soldiers present that weren’t here when they first arrived. They could be heading back to Moscow, waiting reassignment or discharge, or they could be looking for the missing tsesarevich—there is not telling of their purposes, but their presence is making Patrik even more nervous. He’s breathing heavily as they wait in line to buy their tickets, sounding close to having a panic attack.

The clerk gives them a strange look when they approach the booth. “Saint Petersburg,” he repeats critically after Jonathan asks for their tickets, looking over Jonathan’s shoulder to where some soldiers are mingling before his eyes fall on Patrik. The soldiers are paying them little attention, too distracted by games of cards and drink. None of them seem to be on duty, but if the clerk raises the alarm, Jonathan is sure that they’ll jump to attention to arrest them both.

Patrik tries to recoil into his scarf, unable to uphold the simplistic look and behavior they agreed on.

“ _Da_ , _gohspodzin_ ,” Jonathan answers, keeping his tone even and his face free of any emotions. “Two first class tickets to Saint Petersburg.”

“What business do you have there?”

Jonathan can feel himself getting annoyed by this prying clerk, but he can feel Patrik’s anxiety growing, too. They need this conversation to end as quickly as possible. “My brother is to receive a trepanning.”

The clerk’s eyes return to Patrik. Patrik gives him a wide-eyed look, opening his mouth wide and tugging at Jonathan’s sleeve. Jonathan cannot tell if he is playing his part or if he is truly so frightened of the soldiers that he does not know how else to react.

“A trepanning?” the clerk repeats, lifting his eyebrows.

“A doctor is to drill a hole into the back of his head and remove parts of his brain.”

“That seems … morbid.”

Jonathan shrugs, waiting for the clerk to crack and hand over the tickets. “ _Moya radost_ is gentle right now, but he claims to see demons, _gohspodzin_. The doctors say that the trepanning will help.”

The clerk nods, giving them both one long, last look before he hands over the tickets. “The train leaves in half an hour.”

“ _Spaseeba_.”

Jonathan grabs Patrik’s hand, dragging him away before the clerk can say anything more.

He is quick to find their coach and even faster to find their compartment. He slides the door closed behind them, immediately regretting that there is no lock. “ _Malysh_.”

Patrik sits, staring at the wall, mouth open wide.

“ _Malysh_ ,” Jonathan tries again.

Patrik’s eyes are welling with tears. He continues to stare, bottom lip wobbling. He sucks in air through his mouth, beginning to sob quietly.

“ _Malysh_!” Jonathan tries again. He crouches down in front of Patrik, cupping his face and shaking him gently. “ _Patrik_!”

Patrik snaps out of it, coming out of his dark place to look at Jonathan, eyes still wet. “I thought—it felt like that place, all over again.”

Jonathan wipes away the tears from under Patrik’s eyes. “That place?”

“The House of Special Purpose,” Patrik whispers, lifting his hands to touch Jonathan’s wrists. “I knew we weren’t—but I looked at them and I thought…I remembered walking down to the basement.” He sucks in a breath, shaking his head. “One looked like Yurovsky.”

“You are not there now, Patrik.”

“I know,” Patrik weeps, voice cracking. “But I looked at them and I saw Papa—” his eyes begin to well up with tears again “—I saw him get _shot_.”

Jonathan has these sort of memories too. His are always of the battlefield and the terrors he experienced there. Sometimes the memories are so overwhelming that he cannot function.

“They gathered us in the basement and then they told Papa that they were going to execute him. The last words Papa said was ‘what?’ and then they shot him.” Patrik shakes his head as if trying to rid himself of the memory, but he cannot. “I remember all of it.”

“And you always will.” There is no reason to sugarcoat this. Patrik will always have the memories of his family’s execution, and there will be no getting rid of them. Like Jonathan and every other soldier who survived the war, he must learn how to deal with the memories or spend the rest of his life being consumed by them.

Patrik is strong and has overcome so much already. These memories will soon fade, and only be nightmares that appear once in a blue moon. “You must be strong now, _malysh_. One more train ride and then we will be gone from this place.”

Patrik shakes his head, unbelieving. He pulls Jonathan’s hands from his face, immediately lying down as the train starts to pull away from the station. He will be in a pensive mood for the rest of the day now, distracted and moody. Maybe his thoughts will draw him away from the pain that he will undoubtedly be experiencing.

Jonathan settles onto the bench next to him, propping his feet up and bracing them on the opposite bench. Eventually Patrik shifts over, cushioning his head in Jonathan’s lap, fingers digging into his trousers, using the scarf as an extra pillow. Without thinking, Jonathan starts to run his fingers over Patrik’s scalp. It feels as if his curls are already starting to grow back.

They’ll be on the train for well over a day, only stopping to refuel and pick up passengers along the way. It will be an agonizingly long journey for both of them, only to be transformed into an even more agonizingly long one once they get off the train. They can only afford one night of rest before they must board a ship for the week journey to Warnemünde. When they reach Warnemünde and eventually Berlin, Patrik will be able to rest for a few days before they must attempt to carry on to Paris. _That_ leg of the journey will be the most difficult. Europe is still at war, and entering France through Belgium will be extremely difficult.

The first leg of the journey is easy. Patrik falls asleep an hour in, and doesn’t even wake when a conductor comes to check their tickets. The conductor gives them a sour look when he sees Patrik’s head nestled in Jonathan’s lap, but he says nothing, only clips the tickets and exits.

Jonathan manages to fall asleep for the most part too, waking only when the train stops to allow other passengers to board. If the rest of the journey could continue like this then they would be set, but of course it doesn’t.

Patrik wakes in unimaginable pain when they reach Kirov. His legs are cramped, and he wails in agony when the train comes to a lurching stop. He’s coming down with a fever again, body hot and shaking. He curls himself against Jonathan, stuffing his face into his stomach, crying angry tears until Jonathan is able to pry him away. He has no spoon to measure any sort of dosage of heroin out and is forced to give it to Patrik straight from the bottle. Patrik drinks too much, choking on it and spitting most of the drug back up and down his shirt, but it’s enough to make him a bit loopy and numb his pain.

Patrik falls back onto his ass on the compartment floor when he’s done spitting up. He stares up at Jonathan, eyes heavy-lidded but bright. He just sits there, staring as the train rocks him back and forth, looking like he might be sick for a moment, but it passes. “ _Lapa_ ,” he says, voice sweet as lilies as he leans forward, bracing both hands on either of Jonny’s knees. “ _Lapa_.”

Jonathan should not find Patrik humorous while in his drugged state, but it’s hard not to smile and find him entertaining. The heroin numbs Patrik’s bruises and his memories, and maybe this is a side of his personality that Jonathan has never been privy to, but then again, this attitude could just be the drug. “What is it, _moya radost_?”

“We have not kissed in two days.”

Jonathan leans back against the bench, truly unable to keep a smile off his face. “You like it when I kiss you?”

Patrick smiles up at him. “ _Da_.” His smile turns into a frown, fingers digging gently into Jonathan’s knees. “But you have not—”

“You must rest, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan insists, leaning forward to cup Patrik’s face. “My kisses excite you too much.”

Patrik blushes, the color giving life to his pale face. The bruises under his eyes are finally starting to fade, but they will be back soon, Jonathan suspects. Their journey is too rough to give Patrik any sort of reprieve. “You think too highly of yourself, _lapa_.”

Jonathan could tease him mercilessly for having to dismiss himself to the lavatory after a few, brief touches, but he won’t. That would be too cruel, and he wants to keep Patrik’s affection, not lose it. “You could always kiss me, _malysh_.” Patrik looks aghast at such a suggestion. “It is hard sometimes to know if you like me.”

“I do,” Patrik admits, trying to go for aloof, but it’s hard to hide any sort of emotion when they’re staring at each other. “Even if I shouldn’t. You are the revolution that murdered my family.”

“You cannot hold that against me for the rest of your life, Patrik.”

A pensive look drifts across Patrik’s face. “No, I cannott,” he agrees, sounding like he doesn’t quite agree, almost defeated. He tips his head forward, lips moving across Jonathan’s in an imitation of a kiss before he pulls away and decides to climb onto the bench. Jonathan expects for him to curl into a ball like he always does when faced with a dilemma, but he does the opposite, stretching his legs out and pillowing his head in Jonathan’s lap. Jonathan’s fingers immediately go to his scalp. “I want you to throw the heroin down the drain.”

Jonathan’s fingers pause. “It will be painful without it.”

“I do not want to be numb to anything anymore.”

Jonathan starts to move his fingers again, spreading them wide across the back of Patrick’s head. He doesn’t have to look to know that Patrik is crying, his emotions a mudded mix of too much and not enough.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Patrik sleeps again, his head pillowed in Jonathan’s lap until his pain wakes him. He’s a bit feverish, but getting up and stretching his legs to use the lavatory seems to ease some of the pain.

He settles on the compartment floor at one point, limbs spread-out to try and ease some of the cramping. It can’t be comfortable down there, even with one of the cushions he pried off a bench to help create a buffer between the floor and his back, but Patrik’s been living with his pain his entire life—he should know best how to manage it. “Dr. Botkin would give me morphine, but Uncle Rasputin—” he stops, mouth going shut, tension in his jaw. It will be bruised by the morning.

Rasputin. Jonathan does not want to talk about _that_ man. How Alexandra Feodorovna found herself so stupid as to be charmed by such a charlatan Jonathan will never know. But she and that madman helped to spur the revolution that cost her and her family _everything_ , and Patrik must know that by now; he might be a child, but he is not a stupid one.

“Do what you must,” Jonathan says to end the conversation. He doesn’t want to know what tricks that madman used to convince his followers that he could save the life of the their beloved tsesarevich.

Patrik goes silent, except for the shocks of breath he sucks between his teeth every time the train lurches uncertainly. “I was hoping that I would die, before they sent us from Tobolsk.”

Jonathan stops examining the buttons off his shirt to peer down at Patrik. Patrik is looking at him from out the corner of his eye. “I rode a sled down the stairs in the prison house because I thought I could break my neck, but all I did was injury my groin and hemorrhage.”

“They kept saying that no harm would come to us. That after Papa’s trial, we would be exiled, sent to live with Mama’s family and that nothing bad would happen to us as long as we promised not to come back, but I didn’t believe them. Mama and Papa pretended like they believed their lies so that we would not worry, and we pretended to believe our parents, but I think we all knew that we would die.” Patrik takes a shaky breath, eyes flicking to the compartment door. “Papa _knew_ he was going to die, he _knew_ it. But he kept on like he wouldn’t, just for Mama. Just for _us_.”

He swallows, the noise filling the small space. “I knew they would kill me for being the tsesarevich, but I wanted to die at my own hands. I was too afraid to slit my wrists, or to hang myself, so I threw myself down the stairs at every chance.” He turns his eyes from the door, staring straight at Jonathan. “In the end, it didn’t matter what I wanted.”

“And now?” Jonathan asks, shifting on the bench, refusing to drag his eyes away. “Do you wish to die?”

Patrik’s eyes drift from Jonathan’s face to the ceiling, body rocking back and forth with the train. “I do not know what I want.”

Jonathan leans back. He knows from experience that when a man wants to die that there is no stopping them; he watched men climb from the trenches and walk straight into no man’s land simply just to die. “I would be very mad if I brought you all the way to Paris, only for you to throw yourself into the Seine.”

“Would you mourn for me?” Patrik is looking at him again. “Would you mourn for me, Jonathan?”

Four days ago Jonathan would have welcomed Patrik’s death. He would have been annoyed that everything they had worked for had been a waste, but at least he would have been freed of the burden of caring for the boy, but now he cannot imagine his life without the boy. He has resigned himself to being Patrik’s caretaker and protector until his dying breath. “I would mourn for you, Patrik.”

“I am glad,” Patrik says, voice low, “for there is no one left to mourn me.” He chokes at the end, the words forced from his mouth, but there are no tears. “All of Russia thinks I am dead, and there is no one left to mourn me.” He pushes himself up on feeble arms and legs, cutting the short distance between them. He stands between Jonathan’s legs, hands on his shoulders. “There is no one left to mourn me but _you_ , a dirty _Bolshevik_.” He spits the words, eyes narrowed in anger, fingers digging into the meat of Jonathan’s shoulders.

“And whose fault is that, Patrik?” Jonathan’s fingers instinctively go to Patrik’s hips, squeezing them tight enough that he will cause bruises, anger thrumming through him instantly like the constant vibrations of the train. “Your ignorant mother’s, or your bastard father’s?” He lets the words slip from his mouth easily, _knowing_ that his words will hurt.

There’s a moment of silence between them, and then Patrik is lashing out, striking at his shoulders with hard fists, his blows weak, barely registering.

It’s easy for Jonathan to stand, twisting and pushing until Patrik is pressed against the bench, a hand around his throat. He squeezes, seeing red, _delighted_ in the way that Patrik’s eyes go wide in fear, _delighted_ in the way that he tries to pry his hand free, choking.

“ _Listen to me_!” Jonathan spits, face so close to Patrik’s that he can see the trembling of his skin as he shakes in fear. “You are in a hell of your own making. You Romanovs had everything until the people rose up and took what they deserved!” Jonathan squeezes, watching Patrik’s lips start to turn blue as he trembles and chokes for air, his feeble attempts to free himself growing weaker and weaker. “Just because I would mourn your death, _malysh_ , does not mean that I would regret killing you.” He squeezes, watching the life begin to slip from Patrik’s eyes, and then he lets go.

Patrik falls back against the bench, coughing, sucking in angry gasps of air. His fingers immediately go to his throat as he coughs, the noises soon turning into sobs as he curls himself up protectively, flinching when Jonathan draws too close.

“You are in a hell of your own making,” Jonathan repeats, feeling the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He clenches his fist tight, nails digging into his palm, leaning forward so Patrik cannot escape his words. “You are a spoilt brat who knew nothing of suffering until you were taken from your palace, and even then you lived in a gilded cage. You ate cakes and went to balls and pretended to play soldier as your people _starved_. You do not _deserve_ to be mourned!”

“Go away!” Patrik attempts to wail, but his voice is gone, injured by Jonathan’s hand. He looks pathetic as he attempts to bring himself to his knees, forehead resting against the wood of the bench, sobbing. “ _Go away_!”

Jonathan stares at him, watching the way Patrik weeps. He breathes heavily as he stares, the adrenaline slipping from his veins as quickly as it came. There are already bruises forming around Patrik’s neck in the shape of fingertips. He opens his mouth to apologize, but the words get caught in his throat.

“ _Fuck you_!” Patrik says, the words coming out in a rasp, almost lost in the sounds of his tears. “Fuck you!”

Jonathan stares, balling his fingers into fists again. He wants to strike Patrik, hit him for making him feel guilty, but instead he takes his anger out on the door, slamming it open hard enough that it thumps dangerously against the wall as he storms out, sliding back almost into place. He doesn’t turn back to check that the door managed to close, or to see who heard their argument. He is _angry_ , and he cares little for who discovers Patrik.

He storms down the narrow hallway, bumping into other passengers as he goes, heading in a straight line; they are on a passenger train somewhere between Kirov and Moscow—there is nowhere else for him to go.

He walks, mulling his anger as he shifts through the various first class coaches. Patrik is a rotten, _spoilt_ brat—a _Romanov_ born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He cared little for his people while he played corporal and ate his little cakes on his yacht, and now he must pay for that inconsideration. It is his own fault that there is no one left to mourn him.

Jonathan slips into standard class without realizing it. There are people crammed onto every bench, clutching their few belongings to their chests as they look around exhaustedly. _These_ are the true people of Russia.

No one pays any attention as he slips through coach after coach, all too busy with their own thoughts to care anything about him. To everyone he is just another passenger making his way to Moscow, to the new beginnings the Bolsheviks have to offer. Their faces blur as he switches coach after coach, his anger slipping from him and then rebuilding every few minutes.

It drops suddenly as he enters the last coach.

There are soldiers crammed into these benches, speaking in low tones. They pay Jonathan no mind, too fatigued or too busy playing cards as they smoke cigarettes to even look at him. They’re dressed in their soldier’s coats and caps, but none of them look like they’ve seen any combat recently—they’re all probably returning to Moscow since Yekaterinburg was taken by the White Army, and with no royal family to hold hostage and a truce with Germany, Lenin has no use no place for them in the Urals.

Jonathan recognizes none of the men from the Ipatiev House. _Those_ men are probably still with Yurovsky and Ermakov, searching for Patrik.

He lets out a breath, backtracking quickly, suddenly overcome with a wave of anxiety. _Any_ of those soldiers could have been men from the Ipatiev House. Within minutes everything that he had done to save Patrik would have been for nothing. Someone would have recognized him and raised the alarm, prompting a thorough search of the train. Patrik would have been found immediately, and probably only kept alive until the train reached Moscow, where he could be ushered into another basement and murdered there.

He back pedals through the coaches, only stopping once to buy a boiled egg off of a woman selling them out of a basket as a peace offering.

The door to the compartment is closed. There is no one milling about, sticking their noses where they don’t belong. No one cared what took place in their compartment past the few minutes it took for him to storm away.

Patrik is curled against the window when he enters, resting his forehead against the pane. The bruises are darkening against the paleness of his throat, making him look more like a victim than what he really is. He lifts his eyes momentarily to look at Jonathan before he returns to looking out the window.

Jonathan settles onto the opposite bench, holding the boiled egg out in front of him. “I brought you something to eat.”

“I do not want it,” Patrik says, not lifting his eyes again. His voice is raspy as he speaks.

“You must have something to eat.”

Patrik ignores him.

“Do not ignore me.”

“Or what?” Patrik lifts his eyes, looking defiant, but there’s a quiver in his jaw, tears at the corner of his eyes. “You will choke me?”

Jonathan sucks in a breath, at first looking away before he meets Patrik’s eyes. He is a man, and he can admit to his mistakes, or at least _pretend_ to. Perhaps he shouldn’t have reacted so violently and cruelly, but Patrik cannot expect to say such things and not get a reaction. He has given up his _life_ for him—the least he could be is grateful. “I should not have choked you.”

“You are supposed to be my protector,” Patrik says, voice low and small. “You are not supposed to hurt me.”

“I cannot be both your protector and your enemy!” Jonathan does not mean to raise his voice, but there’s still anger boiling under his skin. It’s lucky that the egg is hard-boiled, because otherwise he would have cracked it open in his hand. “One moment you want me to kiss you, and the next you are blaming me for your family’s death. I do not know what you want from me.”

Patrik shakes his head, looking distraught as he sits in his corner, big blues making Jonathan feel _guilty_. He sets the boiled egg down on the seat next to him, bracing his elbows on his knees as he clasps his hands together, hanging his head. “I murdered my own father for hurting my brother.” Patrik makes a quiet noise of shock, unmoving from his seat, but he does lift his head to stare at him. “His body is buried at the cabin.”

“Murdered?” Patrik repeats, voice so low that it’s almost inaudible.

“My father was a horrible, terrifying drunk. He beat my brother and I relentlessly when we were children. One day he took us hunting, and I just _snapped_. I shot him with that rifle we left outside of Yekaterinburg, and then David and I buried him a few feet from the cabin. You pissed on his grave only a few days ago, _malysh_.” Jonathan lifts his head, shrugging one shoulder, giving a weak smile at Patrik’s petrified look. “David and I told everyone that he wandered into the wilderness when drunk, but I think everyone knew what we had done.”

Patrik stares at him, eyes wide as he works his mouth. Eventually he stands, cutting the distance between them short, working his way between Jonathan’s thighs, reminisce to how they were only a few hours ago. Patrik cups his face, lifting it upwards until they’re staring into each other’s eyes.

“ _Lapa_ ,” he says, voice raspy, eyes steely as he looks down at Jonathan. “I will murder you like you did your father if you ever lay hands on me to hurt me again, and I will not be as kind as to bury you.” And then he leans forward, pressing their lips together.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

The rest of their journey is spent in stony silence. Patrik spends most of the ride with his head cradled in Jonathan’s lap, Jonathan’s fingers playing with the short tuff of his hair, the boiled egg abandoned on the opposite bench. They only separate to go to the lavatory or for Jonathan to travel to the food cart to buy a meager portion of bread. He expects for Patrik to keep his distance at every given opportunity, but Patrik always returns to the bench despite whatever pain that he’s in to curl up at Jonathan’s side, his head in his lap. For as much secret hatred Patrik seems to harbor towards him, he takes great comfort in his touch.

It is dizzying and confusing, and this constant back and forth of Patrik’s emotions makes Jonathan want to punch something. Patrik only seems to like him when it pleases or benefits him. At any other time Jonathan is an enemy.

Patrik cannot continue to call him protector one moment and then in the next declare him enemy. They have many more years together, whether Patrik likes it or not, and they cannot be friends, lovers, _whatever_ and continue on like this. Patrik needs to decide whether to tolerate him or hate him: there is no room for anything in-between.

You cannot love a person and hate them all at the same time.

By the time the train pulls into Saint Petersburg, the afternoon sun is high. Jonathan’s legs ache, and he feels antsy from spending a full day and a half stuck in a tiny train compartment with Patrik. He wants to run miles through the city to blow off some steam, but he must first pawn a few gems for rubbles, secure them both tickets on the next ship heading towards Warnemünde, _and_ find accommodation for however long it will be before the next ship leaves.

Patrik is in a pensive mood, securing his scarf around his head and neck with no fuss. He sits and waits for Jonathan to collect their meager things while staring out the window, mouth in a thin line.

Jonathan has them wait to leave until the conductor comes to do a sweep of the train to avoid another panic attack on Patrik’s part, but when they disembark, Patrik pays the soldiers no attention. He loops his arm through Jonathan’s, mouth parted in a curious ‘o’ as they walk, not looking childlike, but like someone who is gazing in amazement as they return _home_.

Patrik grew up in the Winter Palace, right here in Saint Petersburg. The last images he had of his former home, of his former _life_ , were probably right here in the towering beams of Nicholaevsky.

Jonathan remembers being overwhelmed the first time that he had stepped off the ship in Saint Petersburg after returning from the war. Everything had been so similar and yet, so _different_. He had cried as soon as his feet had settled on dry land, so overwhelmed by the prospect of finally being home, of hearing the familiar sounds of Russian and knowing that he would never have go back to those hellish trenches. He had cried here in Nicholaevsky too, very much afraid of what the future held for him. He had been given a one-way ticket to Moscow upon discharge; everything else was up to him to figure out.

“I am home,” Patrik says when Jonathan looks at him for too long. Instead of tears, there is a smile tugging at the corner of Patrik’s lips. “I am _home_.”

“For only as long as it takes us to board the ship, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan reminds cruelly, tugging Patrik in the direction of an exit.

Jonathan expects for Patrik to execute some sort of tantrum when they go directly from the station to the nearest pawn shop, but he just stands quietly as Jonathan pawns off his mother’s valuable gems. Maybe he is too exhausted and overwhelmed to protest, or perhaps he’s even accepted the fact that he might never get his gems back. Whatever the reason, it is quite unnerving to have Patrik so quiet and resigned to his fate, but, really, what can Jonathan expect? He choked the boy near death, and although Patrik forgave him outwardly, there’s no knowing the inner turmoil churning inside of the boy.

The silence remains even as Jonathan splurges on a first class cabin on the first ship to Warnemünde. He just stands there quietly, staring blankly out into the world, mouth in a thin line even as the clerk surveys them with a critical eye. He does not try to play dumb, or even try to give the clerk one of his mischievously charming smiles.

“Your friend—” the clerk begins, but Jonathan is quick to cut him off.

“My _brother_.”

The clerk looks at him dismissively, holding the two tickets in his hand as his eyes sweep across Patrik’s bruised face and lower, to where the tip of a bruise is peeking out from under his scarf.

“He is simple,” Jonathan insists, growing tired of this game every time he must buy a ticket. He will be glad when this whole charade is over with. “Now, the tickets please. I have paid for them.”

The clerk looks like he wants to ask more questions, but he reluctantly hands the tickets over. Jonathan grabs them from his hand, dragging Patrik away with the other.

The clerk at the meager hotel Jonathan finds asks no questions other than what is necessary. He is used to sketchy people coming and going with the ships. As long as Jonathan pays him, he cares little for who he is.

When Jonathan finishes with the clerk, he finds Patrik leaning far too close to a group of men, listening intently to their conversation.

“You are not to draw attention to yourself,” he says lowly, grabbing Patrik by his arm and pulling him towards the stairs.

Patrik goes with him easily, remaining quiet until they’re in the safety of their room, the door securely shut and locked. “There are rumors.”

Jonathan sits on the bed, shedding his boots. “Rumors,” he repeats, too busy rubbing at his forehead from stress to really care.

“Although the tsar did not survive, his son may be still alive.”

Jonathan freezes, hand halfway to his head.

Patrik stands there, scarf still around his head. He hasn’t moved away from the door since they entered the room.

Jonathan lets his hand drop. “There are always rumors in Saint Petersburg.”

“There is a reward, they said. For any information about the whereabouts of the tsesarevich.”

“Those are lies,” Jonathan says, standing. He takes the edge of Patrik’s scarf, slowly unwrapping it from his head. “Lenin would never admit to making such a mistake.”

Patrik lets him take the scarf, standing motionless. His bruises look even worse in the pale light from the one weak lamp in the room. “They sounded like they hoped that I was alive.”

Jonathan takes the scarf, throwing it haphazardly onto the bed. “Maybe I was wrong to say that no one in Russia would mourn you.”

“It is nice to know that there are people that do.” Patrik’s voice is light, quiet. He’s standing taller than Jonathan thought he would after their journey. He has a suspicion that while he was storming through the train, that Patrik helped himself to some of the heroin. He knows that the boy is not strong enough to be standing here like this without any medical assistance. “It is nice to know that not everyone thought of me as a spoilt brat.”

“No, they did,” Jonathan says, meaning to make a joke, but his words look like they crush Patrik. His shoulders hunch, and there are too familiar tears in the corner of his eyes. “From the moment you born, everyone knew that you would be a spoilt brat. You are Russia’s beloved, long-awaited tsesarevich. We all knew that you would be spoilt, but we loved you nonetheless.”

“And no one loves me now.”

Jonathan sighs, fixing Patrik’s collar, careful not to let his fingers skim over his throat. “It was never that the people hated _you_. They hated your father and his government, and your mother and her love of Rasputin, and the fact that they starved and died while the nobles dined on sweets and drank wine.”

“You say ‘they’ as if you were never apart of them.”

“What would you like me to say, _malysh_?” Jonathan asks. “That I hated your father for making me fight that war? That I wanted him put on trial and executed for his crimes against his people? That I cared little for your mother and believed that she was sharing her bed with your dear Uncle Rasputin?”

Patrik’s mouth opens wide, ready to argue, anger boiling under his tears, but Jonathan takes his face in his hands, kissing him gently just to shut him up. He expects for Patrik to resist, to push him away and fight him, but he only sighs into the kiss, almost melting.

He continues to cup Patrik’s face, even when he breaks the kiss. Patrik remains standing there, eyes sweeping back and forth as though searching for something. What he’s searching for, Jonathan doesn’t know, but the boy doesn’t pull away. He stays there, feet planted on the floor, almost like he doesn’t _want_ to leave Jonathan’s presence despite the violence Jonathan rendered on him the day before.

There is something terribly wrong with their relationship.

“I was one of them, _malysh_. I will never deny that. I _rejoiced_ when we stormed your palace and took you prisoner, and I celebrated when you arrived in Yekaterinburg because I _knew_ an end would finally come to the mighty Romanov dynasty.”

Patrik is shaking now, trembling. “You hated me.”

“I _did_.”

“And now?” Patrik’s voice is almost inaudible, raspy, injured by Jonathan’s hand.

“No,” Jonathan answers honestly. “As much as I wish I could, as much as I tell myself that you’re a _Romanov_ and that I should hate you, I _do not_. You are a spoilt little brat, but you are _my_ spoilt brat, Patrik.”

Patrik stares at him, eyes wet, and then he lurches forward, sealing their mouths together. The force of it forces Jonathan backwards, and they stumble until his knees hit the bed, falling backwards onto the mattress. Patrik is on top of him immediately, straddling his thighs, pressing all of his weight down.

There is no urgency in the kiss, no intimacy above sealing their mouths together. Patrik doesn’t try to pry his clothes off, or deepen the kiss. It’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t know what he wants or what he’s doing.

It’s easy for Jonathan to flip them, to get Patrik on his back, nestled between his thighs. Patrik’s breathing hard, arms splayed next to his head like a harlot, but his bruised throat and the bags under his eyes ruin the illusion. It would be easy to strip him and fuck him, but the temptation and arousal just aren’t there. Jonathan is exhausted suddenly, his bones feeling like lead, mind going blank. “I will make love to you in Paris.”

Patrik sucks in a breath, reaching for him. Jonathan collapses forward, burying Patrik under his weight. He stuffs his face into Patrik’s neck, kissing the bruised skin in apology. “I am sorry.”

Patrik lets out a little sob, wrapping his arms tight around Jonathan’s shoulders.

He cries until there are no tears left to cry.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Despite the time of day they both sleep, and they sleep well into the next morning, curled up tight around each in the narrow bed. For once Patrik sleeps fitfully without the aid of the heroin, only waking to use the lavatory before curling himself back up in Jonathan’s arms. It’s a waste to spend all of their time sleeping, but there is nothing else to do in the two days before they can board the ship, and a fitful sleep is something that they both need. The past week has been grueling, both physically and mentally. Perhaps they’ll finally be able to _really_ sleep once they reach Berlin.

When Jonathan wakes— _really_ wakes—he finds the bed empty. It takes a moment for him to realize that Patrik is gone, mind blissfully unaware of anything other than the sunlight and noise filtering in from the window, but when he does become aware that there’s an unfamiliar emptiness next to him, he shoots up so quickly that he makes himself dizzy.

It takes a few seconds for the world to stop spinning.

When it comes to a standstill, it is obvious that Patrik is gone. His scarf is gone from where it fell on the floor in their sleep, and the rucksack has been shuffled through. There’s a moment of sheer panic at first, and then the overwhelming feeling of _anger_.

That little shit has taken off.

Jonathan climbs from the bed, angrily kicking the rucksack, stubbing his toe against the tin of gems. It rattles in the sack, meaning that at least Patrik left him _something_. He wants to punch a wall, or kick a chair, even track that little shit down and choke him again for betraying him and break his little neck. He has risked _everything_ for that boy—that fucking _Romanov_ , just as pathetic and dirty as his lying father—and this is how he has been repaid: played as a _fucking fool_.

He pulls on his shirt. It won’t be hard to track Patrik down. There’s only so far that the boy can go. He’s weak and probably high off of heroin, but he’s too tenacious to turn himself over to the authorities just to be murdered; he’ll board the _one_ ship in all of Saint Petersburg heading to Warnemünde, and so will Jonathan. Whatever gems Patrik decided to leave him will be enough to buy another ticket aboard.

He is just pulling on his shoes, ready to track that little shit down and throw him into the Baltic, when the door opens.

Patrik steps into the room, scarf secure around his head, arms full of loaves of bread. He shuts the door behind him, cringing as it bangs loudly. His eyes are bright today, bags not so heavy, but it’s obvious there’s an ache in his bones despite the fading of the bruises around his face. “ _Lapa_?”

Jonathan stares, dumbfounded.

“I bought bread,” Patrik says, lifting his arms in explanation, looking like a child who was caught being naughty. “I thought you would be hungry.”

“You bought bread,” Jonathan repeats, incredulous.

Patrik shrugs. “Yes?”

“You—I thought—”

“I woke before you, and I was hungry,” Patrik explains, limping into the room. He sets the bread down on the bed next to Jonathan before he kisses the corner of his mouth. “I thought you would still be asleep when I got back.”

“I thought you had left,” Jonathan admits, looking away as he tries not to flush at his foolishness.

Patrik smiles, the movement of his lips almost meeting his eyes. “We are to go to Paris together.”

Jonathan shrugs, feeling the anger leave him with a breath only to be replaced with relief. He really thought that Patrik has tricked him, _abandoned_ him, and below that anger had been _worry_ , true, unfiltered panic that he had been _left_. Only days ago he had just started to become accustomed to loneliness, but the thought of it now actually frightens him.

“Bread,” he says to himself, shaking his head before he stops, jerking it in Patrik’s direction. Patrik is hungrily devouring his bread, none-the-wiser to Jonathan’s turmoil. “You _left_.”

Patrik swallows his bite. “I went to buy bread.”

“No. I mean you left the _room_.”

“ _Da_ ,” Patrik says, looking confused, piece of bread halfway to his mouth.

Jonathan sighs, feeling his anger begin to simmer, just a little. “You left the room to go buy _bread_ , in _Saint Petersburg_ , where half the city would willingly turn you over to the authorities, _Patrik_. You could have— _what if someone had recognized you_?”

Patrik sets the bread down, looking guilty. “I didn’t think—I wanted to do something for you.”

“For me?”

“You always take care of me,” Patrik continues. “I knew you would be hungry too.”

Jonathan cannot be angry with the earnest way Patrik speaks, face looking crushed at his task being so easily dismissed and met with anger. He exhales, tearing a piece of bread from a loaf. “I—thank you. Just don’t—I cannot keep you safe if you go without me. Wake me when you are hungry next time, _malysh_.”

Patrik nods, still not returning to his bread. “You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I would have needed to wake anyway, _malysh_.”

Patrik frowns, but does not argue. He finally returns to his bread, eating it slowly as Jonathan does the same. “No one recognized me,” he says eventually.

“That is a _good_ thing.”

“It was _nice_.”

Jonathan sets his bread down. “Do you _want_ to be recognized?”

“ _No_ ,” Patrik says quickly. “I meant—it was _different_. Before … before, everywhere we went, _everyone_ knew who I was. There were always crowds, always people, always _someone_ watching. I could not slouch, I could not laugh, I could not _smile_. I was always supposed to be the perfect doll. But today—today no one _cared_. I was just another person.”

“Now you know what it’s like to be a mere peasant.”

“It’s pleasant.”

Jonathan pauses, bread halfway to his mouth. It is _not_ pleasant to be a peasant—always impoverished and cold, toiling away in the fields for little to nothing, starving as you break your back. It is not a pleasant or joyful life to be glamorized.

But Patrik is— _was_ —a little prince, and he knows nothing about toiling the fields or breaking his back, and because he will always have Jonathan to care for him, he will never know.

He _should_ be corrected and made to know and feel what a peasant feels so that he _truly_ understands why his people stood up and revolted against his family, but there’s nothing that can be done now. He will never truly understand his people and why they revolted.

Jonathan finally brings the bread to his mouth, taking slow bites. Despite how much he slept, he feels like he has no energy to fight with Patrik today, or tomorrow, or even next week. His emotional capacity to keep fighting has finally reached its limits. He already sees his life going down the drain, easily controlled by Patrik’s spoilt whim.

“We will get new clothes today,” he says, wiping the back of his mouth with his sleeve. They have bathed but not washed their clothes, and even though Jonathan became used to wearing the same things for days, weeks on end during the war, he doesn’t wish to do that now. The city is swarming with Bolsheviks and anti-tsarists, but maybe a trip to a store to purchase a new scarf and shirts might make them both feel just the more better. They both need the fresh air, and they’ve made it this far without being caught. God continues to be on their side.

Patrik immediately smiles at the suggestion, devouring the rest of his bread quickly. He is antsy like a child as he watches Jonathan finish eating and dressing for the day, almost giddy.

“It is only clothes, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says as he buttons his shirt for the third time, only to delay their departure to tease Patrik.

“Move faster,” Patrik insists, knocking Jonathan’s fingers away to complete the task himself. His scarf is wrapped tight around his head, looking like a babushka. “I have never been in a store.”

Of course the spoilt prince had his clothes tailored and made perfect for him right there in his golden palace. Today was probably the first time that he actually held rubles in his hand. “You are truly becoming a peasant today, _malysh_.”

Patrik’s excitement continues as they make their way from the hotel, his arm looped through Jonathan’s, their rucksack flung over Jonathan’s shoulder—they cannot leave their things alone the room, especially not the gems—as they walk down the narrow streets. Despite the heat, despite the ongoing war, and despite the revolution, Saint Petersburg carries on, bustling with life and people.

Jonathan expectes for Patrik to be overwhelmed by so many people, especially overwhelmed by the fact that these are the people who stormed his home and shouted for his father’s head on a spike, but Patrik’s excitement doesn’t diminish. There are moments when he tenses, seizing up tight in panic, but he works through his emotions quickly, the prospect of stepping foot into an actual clothing store outweighing everything.

His happiness is a frightening realization that Patrik is merely just a boy. A teenage boy, but still a boy. A _child_ who’s experiencing joy for the first time in months.

They find a store on a quiet street away from the docks, run by a kind old babushka who clicks her tongue in disgust at Jonathan once he gives his short, sad, explanation for Patrik’s bruises and behavior. “Little birds should be kept pretty,” she says, patting Patrik’s cheek lovingly before she takes his hand and leads him to the back of the store.

“You will spoil him,” Jonathan says, following behind, knowing that all or their money will be spent on making Patrik look pretty, despite how dangerous it is to dress him up and bring any attention to him, but his resistance to anything that Patrik wants is slowly diminishing.

He allows for Patrik to be dressed up in new trousers and shirts and loved on by the babushka as she feeds him cakes and gives him tea, only paying Jonathan minimum attention. She even wraps a few little cakes for them—they’re probably really only for Patrik—when they’re done, watching them leave sadly from the door. It’s plainly obvious that even when playing mute and dumb that Patrik is a little charmer. No wonder everything Jonathan ever heard about the boy was nothing but good despite the admissions that he could be a brat.

“You may have one of my cakes,” Patrik says when they return to the hotel, moving around easily and happily, for once seeming not to be in pain. As far as Jonathan knows, Patrik hasn’t touched the heroin since yesterday. He’s bright today, not loopy and limitless, articulate in his speech. He very much doubts that Patrik is medicated.

Jonathan rolls his eyes, packing some of their new clothes away in the rucksack. “How kind of you.” He feels Patrik smile, even if he doesn’t see it.

Patrik eats a cake quietly, watching him, offering no help like the spoilt brat that he is. “When we get to Berlin, will you give me my gems so I can go to the stores by myself?”

Jonathan pauses, hand in the rucksack right next to the tin. He knows that he promised that he would give Patrik the gems back when they reached Paris, but he doesn’t want to give them up. They have made life easier, despite the constant danger they have been in. He can’t imagine being penniless again, of putting so much control into Patrik’s hands, but he _knows_ that he should give them back. They _are_ his mother’s jewels, and despite how much Jonathan hated the woman, Patrik deserves to have something of his mother’s. “And let you buy out all the stores in Berlin, _malysh_?”

“I will buy you nice things too.”

Jonathan can’t help but smile. He closes the rucksack, happy that everything is arranged the way that he wants.

He settles on the bed next to Patrik, stealing a piece of cake, avoiding his fingers when he goes to slap his hand away playfully. “You will have them back in Berlin.” Patrik smiles happily, his shoulders relaxing. “But you must promise me, Patrik, that you do not pawn them all.”

“I promised to buy you nice things.”

Jonathan cannot look at Patrik as he speaks. “Those are the last relics you have your mother, of your family. Keep what you can close to you.”

It takes him a moment to gather the courage to look at Patrik again. Patrik is teary-eyed, sniffling, but he isn’t truly crying. “Mama would have fainted if she saw me in those trousers.”

Jonathan lifts his eyebrows, saying nothing, but he hopes his face conveys that he wants Patrik to continue. He doesn’t want to hear about Patrik’s mother, but he knows from his own experience that sometimes it helps to speak about the people you miss. “She made us take cold baths and sleep on cots so that we would not be so spoilt, but she hated to see our clothes dirty or a hair out of place. To see me with holes in my clothes, it would have made her heart hurt more than it already did.”

“And yet,” Jonathan says, finally feeling like he can speak, “you are the most spoilt brat that I have ever known.”

Patrik narrows his eyes, pouting. “I am _not_ a spoilt brat.”

Jonathan shrugs, smiling, completely disagreeing.

Patrik eats the rest of his cake grumpily, chewing delicately like a little prince. He wraps the rest of his cakes gently, taking the time to tuck them securely away in the rucksack despite the fact that they’ll probably be crushed tomorrow in the hustle of making it to the ship in time. “What was David like?”

Jonathan startles at the name, feeling a stab of hurt in his chest at just the mention of David. He’s been dead six months now, but it still feels like he was blown to pieces only yesterday. “Despite all that he suffered, he was the gentlest person I knew. He wanted to become a veterinarian, of all things. He hated when our father went hunting because he thought it was too cruel. He was always bringing animals home and trying to hide them.” He smiles at the memory. “I miss him.”

Patrik nods in understanding, reaching across the small space between them to grasp his hand. “We will see our families again, Jonathan. They will be waiting for us.” He squeezes, giving Jonathan one of his smiles, sweet and innocent, nearly loving.

Jonathan squeezes back, taking the comfort.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Come morning, Patrik is melancholy, dressing quietly.

The realization that he is really leaving home, that he will _never_ return to Saint Petersburg, or to the Winter Palace, must be truly hitting him. Jonathan wonders how long it took Patrik after the start of the revolution to realize that he would never return home, that his journey from Saint Petersburg would only end in the death of his entire family. Did he sit in his little room in Yekaterinburg, fantasizing about being rescued? About walking through the giant doors of the Winter Palace and returning to his warm bed? Or did he spend his days staring out the window, thinking about the many ways in wish he could die? 

Patrik had a bad dream the night before, but nothing like his previous nightmares. At one point he had even smiled in his sleep, probably reliving a peaceful, happy memory, before the darker ones had taken hold, but he hadn’t been kicking or thrashing, merely moaning uncomfortably in his sleep. Jonathan had decided against waking him, instead allowing the boy to work through the bad dream.

“This is no longer our home, Patrik,” Jonathan tells him quietly as he helps secure the scarf around his head, still careful to avoid the bruises on his throat. “There is nothing left for us here.”

“Paris will be our new home,” Patrik agrees, voice nothing but a whisper. He looks although he would like to do nothing more than cry, but he holds back his tears, unconvincing as he repeats his words. “Paris will be our new home.”

Boarding the ship goes smoother than Jonathan was expecting, given Patrik’s pensive mood. He plays his part, looking pretty in his clothes, his scarf looser around his head, smiling dumbly at anyone who looks like they might doubt their story. He charms his way easily through boarding, and even more easily through the narrow hallways as they make their way to their meager cabin.

They might be in first class, but they are not on a passenger liner like the _Titanic_ or the _Olympic_. They are on a much smaller liner, not even half the size of either of those ships. A first class cabin is only a large bed and a rack for their luggage, but at least they have their own lavatory and shower and a window. This is luxury compared to where they’ve been staying for the past few days, and will be their home for the next week.

Patrik insists on being on the deck when the liner finally leaves port. He digs his fingers into Jonathan’s arm until Jonathan muscles his way to the railings, shoving Patrik forward and then looming behind him, arms on either side of his waist. People give them dirty looks until Patrik gives them a blank look, spitting up a little for good measure. People stop staring after that, making room.

It’s a bittersweet feeling to leave Saint Petersburg, even for Jonathan.

He only spent enough time in the city to go off to and return from war, so he has no real emotional attachment to the actual city, but these last few glimpses will be the last he will ever see of Russia. He will never be able to return to his home country, not even for a visit. He will never see what fruit the revolution he so vehemently fought for will bear. He will only be able to read about it in newspapers and in history books. He will never truly know if it was all worth it.

He wraps his hands tight around the railing, feeling the same overwhelming feeling of uncertainty that he did when he went off to fight the war. He had told himself then that he would probably never see Russia again, but this time he knows that it is _final_. Everything about his life up to this moment will forever be a distant memory.

Patrik sniffles as they get further and further away, leaning so far over the railing to keep looking back that Jonathan holds onto him by his hips and by his shirt, afraid that he might fall overboard.

When they can no longer see Zayachy Island, Patrik turns in his arms, eyes wet. “I will come home,” he promises, voice low enough that only Jonathan can hear him, “and bury my family where they deserve to be buried.”

It is a dead promise, but Jonathan does nothing but hold Patrik, feeling like he cannot crush the boy’s resolve any more. The last imperial family of Russia will _never_ be buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, not even Patrik when he hopefully dies old and warm in his bed. Patrik will never again be known as Patrik Nikolaevich Romanov, Tsesarevich of Russia. That life for him, as the ship pulls into the open ocean, will never exist again. In a few years perhaps, no one will even remember that there was a tsesarevich.

Patrik is melancholy for days after they leave the port, spending most of their long days lying in bed, only getting up to shower and use the lavatory. He doesn’t even touch his cakes, letting them go stale.

Jonathan has enough on the fourth day. “I did not spend money to make you look pretty only for you to lie in bed.”

Patrik perks up at that, anger washing over his face. They wouldn’t have had the money for clothes if Jonathan hadn’t pawned the jewels that had been sewn into his undershirt and acted as a bulletproof vest, but he seems to lack the energy to truly be angry. He lets Jonathan manhandle him out of bed and then up to the top deck to get fresh air and sunshine.

He doesn’t bother to wear his scarf. His blond curls are already returning, catching brightly in the afternoon sun. They are too far now from the strongholds of the Red Army for there to be any worry. Even if someone does recognize Patrik, there is nothing that can be done. They are too far from Russia and too close to Germany to turn around, and it’s unlikely that the German authorities would willingly give back a prince of ‘German blood’. The news that the tsar has been executed has probably reached Germany by now, and chances are the Kaiser will not return Patrik to Lenin without definite proof that Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters are alive.

For the first time in over a week, they are truly safe.

Patrik sits on a meager deck chair, soaking in the sun. His bruises are mostly gone now, even faded from his torso and legs. There are bags under his eyes from where he’s been awoken from the occasional nightmare or just not slept at all, but he looks far healthier than the first time they met, and remarkably, just the bit fatter too. He’s been eating every day, three times a day, upon Jonathan’s insistence, and has gained back some of the weight he lost while in the Ipatiev House. It is not much, but when Jonathan runs his fingers down Patrik’s back, the knobs in his spine aren’t so prominent, and his ribs aren’t poking so badly through his skin anymore. He will be a plump thing by the time they reach Paris. 

“Once we reach Paris, I never want to ride another train or boat ever again, and you can’t make me.”

Jonathan snorts, lighting a cigarette he pawned off another passenger. He reluctantly hands it over when Patrik makes grabby hands for it. Unsurprisingly, Patrik coughs at the first puff, immediately handing it back.

“I promise, _malysh_. No more boats. No more trains. I am just as tired of them as you are.” Jonathan takes one last puff of the cigarette before extinguishing it with the toe of his boot. “Are you done sunbathing?

“You are the one who forced me up here,” Patrik whines, but extends his arms out so that Jonathan must lift him up like a child. He returns to their bed when they go below deck, but that’s only because there is really nowhere else for him to sit. He does not lie down at least, but remains sitting up, demanding that Jonathan entertain him before Jonathan caves and returns to the deck to bargain with another passenger for a deck of cards.

Patrik spends their last days at sea in a much better mood, less prone to melancholy, although it does take some convincing on certain days to get him to go up on deck. It is obvious that he doesn’t quite like being around other people, the mistrust of their intentions and their existence and what they _might_ do to him apparent, but he needs the fresh air, and, besides, there is not much for them to do while on such a small ship other than walk circles around the deck and play cards in their room. 

Patrik seems almost excited when they finally dock in Warnemünde, only for that excitement to disappear once he realizes that they must ride a train from the port into the capital.

“ _Please_ ,” he whines as they settle into their seats, cushioned between two women. “No more train rides for a few days.”

The women next to them sneer at their Russian, but Jonathan ignores them to tip his head back against the seat. “A few days, and then we carry on.”

The ride from Warnemünde to Berlin is not that long, only a few hours, but it is still uncomfortable for Patrik, whose legs and arms cramp so easily. He is whiney when they finally pull into the station and downright annoying when they finally find accommodation, spurred on by the fact that he was the one who had to act as translator, seeing as the only words Jonathan knows in German are curses and insults, and Patrik spent the entirety of his life speaking to his mother in her mother tongue. It’s really no surprise that his Russian is riddled with flaws at times, seeing as he never actually seemed to speak it.

He is thriving in the fact that their roles have been reversed. Unless they find a Russian community or Jonathan magically becomes fluent in German, it is Patrik who must secure and navigate the city for them. He smiles slyly at Jonathan from their bed, _knowing_ now that Jonathan’s _comfortable_ survival rest in his hands. Jonathan can easily survive without Patrik’s help, but it would be a struggle until he got some sort of grasp of the language.

“Do not look so smug, _malysh_. We will only be here for a few days.”

Patrik’s little grin slips. He looks around the room briefly before his eyes return to Jonathan’s face. “Must we go to Paris so quickly?”

“You want to stay here?”

Patrik nods, stepping away from the bed. “We have spent the past two weeks running, _lapa_. I need to rest.” He gives Jonathan a soft look, already knowing that he has the ability to melt Jonathan with just his eyes, or even a soft touch. He will be the death of him. “ _You_ need to rest. Please, may we stay? At least until my birthday?”

“Your birthday?”

Patrik smiles sadly, giving a quick shrug of his shoulders. “The 12th of August.”

Patrik would have died, less than a month shy of his eighteenth birthday, if Jonathan hadn’t intervened and saved his life. That realization makes him both sad and relieved. Sad that Patrik’s young life would have ended so soon, but somehow relieved that Patrik hadn’t had to spend such a joyous occasion such as his eighteen birthday held hostage. “We will stay until the 13th, but not a day longer. I want to get to Paris.”

Patrik smiles bright, kissing Jonathan’s mouth softly. “We will have cake!”

“Every babushka on the street already gives you cake.”

“ _Oma_ ,” Patrik corrects, just to be a little brat. “We will go a proper café, and we will have cake. With milk and tea.”

Jonathan shakes his head, incredulously fond. “And then we go to Paris, Patrik. Do not forget.”

Patrik nods, licking his lips. There’s a question he wants to ask, but he’s holding back. Jonathan hates this game. “What is it, _malysh_?”

“Why … why must we go to Paris?”

“That has always been our plan.”

“I know, but _why_? We could stay—”

“We are going to Paris.” Jonathan will hear no further arguments. He wants to get as far away from Russia as they can, and Paris is as good as any place for them. There he can at least speak the language, and mostly importantly, there are no royal families. The French people are rightly free of any influence of kings and queens. They have a real democracy, something that Jonathan wishes to experience.

Patrik looks like he wants to continue to argue, but he also knows better than to try. “Yes,” he agrees, sighing in disappointment. “To Paris we go.” He’s sad, but that doesn’t keep him from kissing the corner of Jonathan’s mouth. “Can we walk around the city?”

It is late, but Jonathan agrees.

They walk the streets side by side, arms brushing against each other’s. It feels strange not to have Patrik clinging to his arm as they walk, but there is no point of him pretending to play simpleton in the safety of Berlin. No one here knows what Russia’s lost tsesarevich looks like, so Patrik is free to walk around without his scarf, and to smile and talk loudly and laugh. The only worry they have here are people who are suspicious of Russians, and even more suspicious of two men who are a tad bit too close.

The clerk at the hotel and Patrik had had a very heated argument before she had reluctantly agreed to allow them to have a room. Jonathan doesn’t know if the argument had been over the mere thought of two men sharing a bed, or if Patrik had annoyed her by insisting that they needed only one bed, not two, to save money. Whatever the root of the argument, Jonathan knows that they must be careful. They cannot be arrested for suspicions of sodomy, not after traveling this far.

They walk for what seems like half the city before the turn back, Patrik’s legs cramping from the excursion. They will probably be bruised tomorrow from all of the walking, but he is happy as they climb into bed. He drapes himself over Jonathan, pressing his ear to his chest, right over his heart like some sort of giant baby.

“Brat,” Jonathan says fondly.

It is of course that night that Patrik’s memories decide to rear their ugly heads violently.

It’s his distressed kicking that wakes Jonathan.

Sometime in the middle of the night Patrik slipped from his grip, and is now balancing dangerously at the edge of the bed, kicking his legs out and moaning, eyes dancing rapidly behind his eyelids.

Jonathan quickly reaches out, avoiding a leg, and grabs Patrik by his wrists. He lets out an _agonizing_ scream as Jonathan tugs, dragging him away from the edge and towards the center of the bed, thrashing about, trying desperately to get away, but Jonathan is fast to wrap his legs and arms around Patrik, a hand flying up to his mouth to try and stifle any more screams.

“ _Malysh_!” he whispers harshly into Patrik’s ear, trying to wake him. “ _Malysh_!”

Patrik wakes with a violent jolt, head flinging forward. He immediately begins to sob erratically, shaking his head back and forth.

“Hush,” Jonathan says soothingly into his ear, petting his hip with the hand not covering Patrik’s mouth. “Shhh, _moya radost_ , you are safe. I am here. _You are safe_.” He lets his hand slip from Patrik’s mouth, loosening his grip on his legs when he’s sure that Patrik has calmed enough, but he doesn’t let go, only shifts them better so that he can hold Patrik more lovingly.

“We were so _happy_ ,” Patrik sobs, fingers scrabbling against Jonathan’s skin, fingernails dragging painfully across his torso, but Jonathan lets him do it, baring the pain. He has experienced far worse.

He strokes Patrik’s hair, trying to keep his voice low and gentle. “It was not your fault, Patrik.”

Patrik continues to sob well into the early morning hours. He manages to lull himself to sleep, exhaustion eventually taking over. Jonathan lets him slip from his grasp, dressing quickly before he gently begins the slow process of moving the bed closer to the wall in a hopeful attempt to keep Patrik from falling from the bed if he has another nightmare, and then he just sits, unable to leave the room out of fear that Patrik might need him.

It takes only another hour for Patrik to wake again. He’s almost happy when he opens his eyes, still in that not-yet-awake blissful moment between wakefulness and sleep, and then all the emotions from the night before seem to hit him at once. He sobs, tugging his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to stifle his cries.

“Come here,” Jonathan commands, reaching out for him. Patrik comes to him quickly, crawling over the bed so he can collapse next to his side, head pillowed in Jonathan’s lap. Jonathan’s fingers immediately go to his hair, playing with the short curls there.

“I thought they had gone away,” Patrik admits after a long silence, sniffling between his words. “It had been so long since I last had a nightmare.”

“There is no rhyme or reason to them, _moya radost_. They will come and they will go, and you must learn to live with them.”

Patrik goes quiet for a moment. “Maybe we should see a doctor about a trepanning.”

“You would be a shell of a person, _malysh_. You are too tenacious to live like that.”

Patrik lets out a little laugh, sitting up. He smooths his hands over Jonathan’s face, touching at scars, pressing his palms closer against his jaw to feel the stubble. “Do your demons not haunt you, _lapa_?”

“I numbed myself with alcohol when David died, but that is no way to live, _malysh_. You cannot numb yourself to that pain. It is still new, still raw. The ache will dull eventually.”

Patrik closes his eyes momentarily, taking a moment before he opens them again. “I hope that you are right, _stchastye moyo_.” He pulls away from Jonathan to curl into a ball, a wave of melancholy washing over him. Jonathan knows that today will not be a day that they leave their room.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

It is surprisingly easy to settle into a routine once Patrik’s melancholy passes. They have enough rubles turned into marks to live comfortably without Jonathan having to worry about finding temporary work in a factory, and without the ever living worry of Bolsheviks just around the corner, Patrik begins to live more freely, beginning to come and go from their room unaccompanied, still distrustful, but with little worry. He is _safe_ here, and doesn’t need to worry about being dragged away to be ruthlessly bayoneted in a dingy basement.

Patrik is still plagued by his nightmares and bouts of melancholy, but Jonathan has always doubted that those demons would ever go away. Patrik has faced a warzone of his own, and his feelings and emotions of trauma from what he’s experienced will never go away, and will most definitely take more than a few weeks to dull into something manageable. Jonathan holds Patrik through his nightmares and tries to help his melancholy by bringing him cakes and by taking him for walks around the city, but sometimes the walks make Patrik even more melancholy, the city reminding him of his mother and subsequently the rest of his family too. There is only so much Jonathan can do to try and make him happy.

But he appears to grow happier nearer his birthday, losing his melancholy the closer they get to the day despite drawing closer to their departure. He hasn’t tried again to convince Jonathan to stay in Berlin and not move on to Paris, but Jonathan knows that he wants to stay, for whatever warped reason. Perhaps he feels closer to his long-dead mother here, or he just doesn’t want to do another impossibly long journey, but whatever the reason, Jonathan has already decided that they will move on, despite the ever still waging war.

It _would_ be easier to wait the war out, but there’s no telling for how much longer it will drag out, and Jonathan wants to move on quickly. The faster they get to Paris, the faster they can settle somewhere and stop living out of a rucksack and try and make some sort of semblance of a life. He has not had a home since he was a teenager, spending the years between his father’s murder and the war traveling through the Urals with David, following job after job. Even if they must live in a boarding house, at least they will have somewhere to call _home_ , and he _knows_ that that is something that they both need. Stability will do them both some good.

Sometimes Patrik wanders off on his own for hours, worrying Jonathan to no ends, but he always returns, sometimes happier and sometimes more melancholy than when he left. Jonathan wants to forbid him from leaving by himself, but he knows that he cannot actually do that. Forcing Patrik to be in the room would only make his pensive moods worse, and besides, he _should_ be fostering independence in the boy. 

Patrik has been waited on hand and foot his entire life, always surrounded by people willing to take care of him. Independence will be good for him, seeing as when they reach Paris and Jonathan does find work, he cannot be with him every moment of the day. Patrik must learn how to operate without Jonathan there always ready to catch him when he falls.

When Patrik returns from his walks, he is either chattering animatedly about what he saw or heard, or so melancholy that he immediately crawls into bed, not wishing to be touched or spoken to.

On one particular day, Patrik returns to their room shaking, his normally pristine blond curls flopping into his eyes, his shirt stained from sweat. He has been running, even in the heat and the ever dawning aches and pains he will suffer tomorrow. He throws a newspaper in Jonathan’s face before Jonathan can even say anything.

“What is this?” Jonathan asks, irritated. He lifts the newspaper, annoyed because they both know that he will be unable to read it; Patrik must translate for him. Usually the boy finds some glee in acting as translator, sometimes bringing the paper back creased and bookmarked with articles that he’s already translated, sure that Jonathan will find them entertaining.

“Look at it,” Patrik insists, voice breaking. “Look at it!”

Splashed across the front page is a photo Patrik’s older sister, the one closest to him in age, Anastasia. She looks regal in her official portrait, staring back at Jonathan with wide, warm eyes, her auburn hair falling down her back. It is in an old photo, taken before the revolution, before a bout of typhoid had forced her head to be shaved.

Jonathan stares, dumbfounded. The last he saw of Anastasia, her head was caved in, brains splattered across a wall, body huddled over his sister Maria. It takes a moment for his eyes to leave the photo and travel down the page, but everything is written in German. All he can make out is Anastasia’s name, and the name of her sister, Olga.

“There is a woman in the hospital,” Patrik explains, voice shaking, face a crumbled mess of emotion when Jonathan looks at him. “She says that she is Anastasia.”

“ _Malysh_ ,” Jonathan exhales.

“We must go and see if it is her.”

“ _Patrik_.”

“What if it is her?!” Patrik yells, grabbing the newspaper, looking over Anastasia’s picture with wild eyes. “I must see if my sister is alive!”

“She is dead, _malysh_ ,” Jonathan says as gently as he can, reaching out for Patrik’s hand, trying to calm him.

Patrik rips his hand away. “What if she isn’t!?”

“She is dead!”

Patrik stops moving and just stands, staring, eyes wide.

Jonathan lets out a breath, standing and cupping Patrik’s face. There is no possibility that the woman in the hospital is Anastasia. She is an imposter, trying to make rich off the tragedy off the Romanov execution. A distant cousin, unfamiliar with the actual grand duchess, could easily fall for this trick, just as Patrik has, and secure the imposter’s future for the rest of her life. “She is _dead_ , Patrik.”

Patrik begins to cry, fat tears streaming down his cheeks. “It _could_ be her.”

Jonathan shakes his head. “It is not possible, Patrik. She, and the rest of your sisters, are dead.”

Patrik moans, mouth opening wide as he shakes his head. “I don’t believe you,” he sobs, voice breaking.

Jonathan has kept the grisly details of the aftermath of Patrik’s family execution to himself. He knows nothing of what Patrick remembers as he removed him from the basement, but he had hoped that it was next to nothing. He cannot save Patrik from the details now. “Her brains were splattered against a wall, Patrik. The same with Maria’s and Olga’s and Tatiana’s. They cowered in a corner together as Yurovsky and Ermakov shot them point blank.”

Patrik continues to shake his head, crying harder. “What if it is her? I managed to escape. What if someone—”

Jonathan feels his heart breaking. Patrik has almost been quietly accepting of his family’s death, matter-of-fact in the reason that they are all dead, but now that there is an imposter pretending to be his beloved sister, he is cracking. He cannot help but hold onto the little bit of hope that he is not alone, that someone else in his immediate family survived their tragedy. He cannot even reason in his grief that it is impossible for anyone else to have survived. He was bayoneted and miraculously managed to avoid the hail of bullets; his family was not as lucky. “ _Moya radost_.”

“What if she isn’t dead?!” Patrik cries, holding Jonathan’s wrists, begging with his eyes for Jonathan to say that it isn’t true, that she was alive, that he chose to save Patrik over her or arranged for someone else to help her. “What if someone helped her? She could be in that hospital, suffering, thinking that we are all dead.”

“That woman is not Anastasia, Patrik. She is an imposter.”

“She is Anastasia! Aunt Olga thinks so!”

Jonathan scrunches his face in confusion. “Aunt Olga?”

“Papa’s sister. She fled before the Bolsheviks took us. She’s here, in Berlin, with Cousin Ernest.”

Realization dawns on Jonathan like a sharp stab to the heart. “This is why you wanted to stay. Because you knew your aunt and cousin were here.”

Patrik nods, sniffling. “They are here, and they are going to visit Anastasia in hospital at the end of the week.”

“And you want to be there, so you can run into them.”

“They are the only family I have left.”

Jonathan wants to be angry, but he cannot even find a simmer of it, not while Patrik stands in front of him, suffering so. He cannot blame him for wanting to be reunited with the last of his family. Even if the news of the Anastasia imposter hadn’t broken, Patrik would have found a way to reunite with his aunt and cousin, and Jonathan cannot blame him, for he would have done the same.

When he had first rescued Patrik, he had been vehemently against allowing Patrik back into the hands of the monarchists, or into the hands of any of the royal family in case they tried to put his jewel back on his throne, but now? Now he cannot imagine keeping Patrik from his aunt or cousin. They are powerless here in Berlin, his aunt an exile and his cousin a worthless count. With the war still raging, and Europe in shambles, they would be powerless to put Patrik on any throne, especially the Russian one. All they could really do with Patrik would be to turn him into a symbol against the Bolsheviks, but it would do nothing to hinder their cause.

Keeping Patrik from his family would be a special sort of torture, a cruelty that Jonathan is not able to execute. He only wishes he could spare Patrik the pain of seeing that imposter pose as his sister.

Jonathan wipes away Patrik’s tears. “We will go to the hospital to meet your sister and your aunt.”

Patrik leans into his touch, letting out a breath of relief, but he looks pained, still crying. “We will not go to Paris together.”

“No, we will not, _lubov moya_.” It pains something deep inside of Jonathan to say that, but it is something he must come to terms with. He planned an entire life with Patrik, but it will not come to fruition, and that is something that he must accept. He will mis his _malysh_ , his little joy, but he must not be selfish. He still has no idea _why_ he rescued Patrik, but he does not regret doing it, not in the least.

Weeks ago he would have rejoiced at Patrik’s misery, at his death and suffering, but now he would give Patrik the world, only to see him smile.

“I can always visit, _malysh_ ,” he says, forcing a smile. “I always wanted to know what the inside of a palace looked like.”

Patrik forces his own smile. “It is very boring. You are not allowed to touch anything, unless it breaks.”

Jonathan laughs, using his sleeve to wipe the remainder of Patrik’s tears, and then his own. He is a grown man, and should not be crying over the loss of a boy who is destined to be, and do so much more, than be a footnote in a future history book. History will remember Patrik as Russia’s last tsesarevich, the boy who survived the October Revolution. Jonathan will be nothing more than a footnote in one of Patrik’s chapters.

“No more tears now, Patrik. You have cried too many. Why don’t we get a cake?”

“You are the one who always makes me cry,” Patrik says.

They go to the little café on the corner that Patrik enjoys. The woman who runs it adores Patrik, like most do. They order one small cake to share, but she brings them an extra, only because she believes Patrik to be a good boy. They eat their cake silently, neither knowing what to say to each other. It feels like a last supper, despite the fact that there are three more days between now and the end of the week.

Only three more days for him to spend with his _malysh_.

Afterwards they take a walk around the neighborhood for hours in the same continued silence, shoulders brushing together.

When they climb into bed that night, Jonathan expects for there to a space between them, a physically reminder of their upcoming separation, but Patrik undresses, and then to his surprise, climbs onto the bed and straddles his thighs, large blue eyes staring down at him.

“You promised to make love to me in Paris,” he says, voice quiet in the night as he straddles Jonathan’s waist. He is in nothing but his underwear and his open shirt, the material falling loose off his shoulders, moving in the night’s breeze. He looks the image of a harlot sitting there, lips pouted, blond curls a mess.

Jonathan cannot help but place his hands on Patrik’s hips and feel the way his bones fit perfectly under his palms. “I did.”

Patrik sighs, settling his weight more easily. It stirs something inside of Jonathan, his cock giving a weak twitch. It has been months since he’s slept with anyone. “Will you make love to me now?”

“Is that you want?” Jonathan asks, petting Patrik’s skin. “To lose your virginity to a Bolshevik?”

Patrik’s body stiffens, balancing himself with his hands on Jonathan’s chest. “Despite your short comings, you are my _liubimiy_.”

Jonathan sucks in a startled breath, hands still on Patrik’s hips, holding tight enough that he could bruise him so easily. “What do you know of such words, _malysh_?”

Patrik grins. “A lot more than you realize, _lapa_.” He leans forward, kissing Jonathan passionately. He is sloppy and inexperienced, but Jonathan gets the sentiment. Even if Patrik does not truly know the meaning behind _liubimiy_ , he cannot deny him this.

He sits up, arms around Patrik’s waist as they continue to kiss, tipping Patrik backwards until he ends up on his back. It is easy to settle between his legs, letting out a low moan when he feels how hard Patrik has grown for him. He cannot imagine another man seeing Patrik like this, but it is a reality that he must come to terms with.

“Do you know how two men fuck, Patrik?”

Patrik licks his lips, and to Jonathan’s surprise, nods. “I did not just sightsee on my walks, Jonathan.”

A possessive, angry ache squeezes Jonathan’s heart. “So you will not be losing your virginity tonight.”

“I am not a _whore_ ,” Patrik says, wrapping his arms around Jonathan’s bare shoulders. “There is a club, for men—for men like _us_. I went and asked questions.”

Jonathan lets out a bark of laughter, imagining Patrik in a dimly lit night club, asking men how to fuck.

“Do not laugh at me!”

“I am sorry, _moya radost_ ,” Jonathan laughs, leaning down to kiss Patrik, grinding their hips together just to feel Patrik gasp against his mouth. Patrik’s fingers dig into his skin, hips bucking up to meet his, dragging a moan out of both of them at the friction.

Patrik breathes against his mouth, rolling his hips. “We walked past the club once, you know,” he manages to say. “During the day it is a small little meeting place, where the men come to talk about the war and eat their sandwiches. We walked past, and the next day, everyone said that you looked like a gracious lover.”

Jonathan can’t help but let out a snort of laughter, unbelieving. “Really?”

Patrik nods, fingers slipping between them to tug at the waistband of Jonathan’s underwear, more bold than Jonathan was expecting him to be. “Frans was jealous. He did not know that Russian men could be so beautiful.”

“And what are you? An ogre?” Jonathan asks as he slips from his underwear. He smiles at the way Patrik stares at his cock, proud of its length and girth. He is not a small man by any means.

Patrik swallows nervously. “They think that I am German.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes, slipping his thumbs under Patrik’s waistband and tugging, removing his underwear in one brief motion, leaving him exposed. He lies there, swallowing nervously from time to time. He is pale and speckled with a bruise here or there, but he is beautiful.

Jonathan lifts his leg, kissing from Patrik’s pale ankle all the way up his leg to his thigh, feeling Patrik shiver and gasp under him. He will prove that Frans was right about him being a gracious lover. “Do you know where men like us like to put their mouths?”

Patrik takes a deep breath. “Are you going to suck my cock?”

“Hmm,” Jonathan hums, kissing up Patrik’s hipbone and to his belly. He kisses the skin right next to where Patrik’s cock has curved up, hard and pink. “That is one place.” He lifts his eyes to look at Patrik’s face, fingers slipping between his legs to touch his hole with dry fingers. Patrik lurches up in shock, eyes wide.

“You do not—”

“Did your friends not tell you about that, Patrik?”

Patrik is staring at him, breathing heavily. He licks his lips. “You would put your mouth _there_?”

Jonathan hums, circling his finger at Patrik’s hole. “I _would_.” He tips forward, pulling Patrik’s bottom lip between his teeth, careful not to let the tip of his finger breach him. He is still new to this—he does not want anything to hurt, not unless Patrik asks for it to.

“You are filthy,” Patrik says, blush high in his cheeks and across his collarbones.

“You will love it,” Jonathan says. He pulls his fingers from between Patrik’s legs, only to place them on his thighs, spreading the boy wide. He gives Patrik time to protest, but the boy only remains silent, watching him from under heavy lids, mouth parted in anticipation.

Jonathan gathers spit on his tongue as he crouches forward, ignoring the discomfort he already feels in his neck and back; a little pain is worth experiencing the noise Patrik makes when he licks experimentally across his hole.

“Jonathan!” Patrik cries out before immediately clamping down on his lip.

“Quiet,” Jonathan murmurs, letting his breath ghost over Patrik’s skin. Patrik gasps, whole body shuddering. “You will wake the neighbors.”

“You are a bastard,” Patrik whispers.

Jonathan smiles, lifting his eyes to watch Patrik’s face as he goes back down, keeping Patrik’s thighs spread wide as he licks him again, one long stripe from his hole and up his perineum. Patrik shudders again, letting out a sharp gasp as he tries to wiggle away. “Do you want me to stop, _malysh_?”

Patrik takes in a few ragged breaths, overwhelmed already. His is already leaking a steady stream of pre-come against his belly. “It feels good.”

Jonathan takes that as permission to continue. He grips Patrik’s thighs hard enough to leave bruises, and then licks at Patrik’s hole again, quick flicks up his tongue. Patrik moans, head falling back, thighs trying to fight Jonathan’s grip. Jonathan laughs against his skin, kissing his hole before he dips his tongue back in, gathering spit on his tongue to make Patrik wet.

“ _Jonathan_ ,” Patrik moans, reaching down to dig his fingers into Jonathan’s hair, lifting his hips at the same time, trying to press his ass back against Jonathan’s mouth. Jonathan can’t help but laugh again, doing as Patrik wants, pressing his tongue more firmly against his hole until Patrik’s body gives way, letting his tongue in.

Patrik cries out before he bites down on his lip, harsh.

Jonathan fucks his tongue in and out, moaning at Patrik’s stifled gasps and moans, feeling his cock give a jerk. It’s been so long since he fucked another person, and he already knows that Patrik is going to be tight as a lock, milking his cock when he finally manages to get inside of him.

He draws his mouth away to Patrik’s immense displeasure, smiling at the daggers Patrik shoots his way. “Why did you—”

“To think you did not want my mouth there,” Jonathan interrupts, tipping forward to capture Patrik’s mouth in a kiss. Patrik grunts against his lips, tasting himself, but he wraps his arms around Jonathan’s shoulders again, wanting to keep him close. Jonathan presses his weight down, dragging a moan out of both of them when their cocks brush together, but it’s dry and almost uncomfortable.

On the bedside table is a pot of oil that Patrik bought a few days earlier to massage into his skin. It is supposed to help with the ache in his muscles, but it will also work perfectly as a lubricant.

Jonathan coats his fingers with it before he wraps his hand around Patrik’s cock, creating a loose circle of his fingers. Patrik immediately gasps, jerking into his grip. “Did you use to touch yourself late at night, my little mouse?”

“Don’t be so cruel to me,” Patrik moans, twisting as Jonathan tightens his grip.

“It is hard not to tease you,” Jonathan says, leaning his forehead against Patrik’s as he flicks his wrist. Patrik makes little breathy noises beneath him, mouth open wide, staring up at Jonathan like he’s some sort of _god_ and they haven’t even started fucking yet.

Jonathan lets go if Patrik’s cock so that he can kiss down his throat, over each rosy nipple and then lower to kiss his belly, jaw sliding across the head of Patrik’s cock.

“ _Fuck_ ,” breathes Patrik, fingers on Jonathan’s shoulders. Jonathan takes the hint, although he wants to spend more time teasing Patrik. He draws the boy’s cock into his mouth, tonguing at the head and delighting in the noise Patrik makes in surprise before he slides down further, swallowing Patrik’s cock.

“Shit,” says Patrik, nails dragging across Jonathan’s skin tantalizingly. Jonathan hums, bobbing his head up and down, lifting his eyes to watch Patrik’s reactions. Patrik’s eyes are squeezed shut, bottom lip pulled between his teeth, but there’s pleasure written all across his face. No one has ever done this to him, and it sends a thrill of pleasure down Jonathan’s spine to know that he is the first person to see Patrik so undone, but there’s also a spike of jealousy and anger. He won’t be the last one, or the _only_ one, to ever see Patrik like this.

Jonathan braces one hand on Patrik’s hip, letting his cock slide further down his throat, his other hand sneaking between Patrik’s legs to his hole where he’s still wet from spit. He tentatively pushes against Patrik’s skin, distracting him by pulling off his cock enough to wrap his lips around the head and suck, just as he pushes his finger in. Patrik’s body gives easily, too distracted by Jonathan’s mouth to have any real reaction to his finger.

“I—” Patrik breathes, at a loss of words, eyes springing open to look at Jonathan, but his pupils are blown wide.

Jonathan pulls off his cock to kiss him, thrilling in the way Patrik just submits to him, the way he gives a weak moan when Jonathan’s shifting causes his finger to dip lower. “You are beautiful like this,” he says, working his finger in and out gently. “You are beautiful always.”

“Don’t try and flatter me with your words,” Patrik responds, the words drawing out into a long moan when Jonathan crooks his finger and finds what he’s looking for. “What are you—”

“Hush,” Jonathan says, withdrawing his finger to coat his hand with more oil before he returns, placing a sticky hand on Patrik’s hip and guiding two fingers to his hole. He presses them in, gauging Patrik’s reaction, keeping his wrist steady. Patrik cringes in pain, but he breathes throughout, mouth open wide, taking Jonathan’s fingers to the last knuckle.

“Breathe, _moya radost_ ,” Jonathan says calmly, withdrawing his fingers slightly before working them back in, thumb rubbing softly across Patrik’s hipbone. “It will feel better soon.”

Patrik nods, biting his bottom lip, looking pained and then surprisingly unimpressed until Jonathan crooks his fingers again. He almost shouts, lifting off the mattress before Jonathan settles him back down. “There we go,” Jonathan murmurs, working his fingers in and out quicker, finger-fucking him well enough that Patrik doesn’t even realize it when he slips a third finger in, not until he’s stretched wide.

“ _Jonathan_ ,” he moans, pressing down on his fingers. “Please—I—”

“I know what you want,” Jonathan interrupts, working his fingers, changing the angle just to watch the pre-come drip from Patrik’s cock onto his belly. “Please—I need—”

Jonathan grins. “You need to come, _moya radost_?”

Patrik nods, tears at the corner of his eyes. “Please, _please_.”

Jonathan wraps a hand around Patrik’s cock, thumbing at the head just as he crooks his fingers, and then Patrik is coming, crying out and lifting his hips off the bed, toes curling uselessly. He clamps down on Jonathan’s fingers, vice like in his grip, spilling come all over his belly and even across his nipples.

“ _Stchastye moyo_ ,” Jonathan says, overly fond and loving as pulls his fingers out, cock dribbling pre-come as he looks at Patrik, flushed red and breathing heavily. He leans down, swiping a thumb over Patrik’s nipple teasingly. Patrik gasps, moaning, trying to wiggle away and get closer to Jonathan all at the same time.

Jonathan gives him a moment to rest, ignoring his own arousal to pet at Patrik’s hip.

Patrik tugs on his shoulders, pulling him forward for a kiss. “You promised to make love to me.”

“This is making love,” Jonathan says, but he reaches for the oil again, using it to cover his cock, feeling Patrik’s eyes on him as he moves. He takes himself in hand, lining up. “This will hurt.”

Patrik rolls his eyes, playful. “I have experienced much worse.”

“You have,” Jonathan agrees, and then he pushes in, bracing himself the best he can against Patrik’s resistance. Patrick immediately seizes up, unused to his girth or even having a cock in his ass in the first place. “You must breathe,” Jonathan grits, straining to hold himself still. Patrik is so tight that all he wants to do is fuck in, but he has to be careful; he does not want this experience to be horrible for Patrik, or to bruise him.

Patrik does as told, breathing loudly through his nose as Jonathan pushes in, inch by inch until there’s nowhere else for him to go, pelvis pressed against Patrik’s ass. Jonathan gently tips forward, shifting the angle to kiss Patrik square on the mouth, trying to distract him from the momentary pain.

Patrik breathes ragged against his mouth, clinging to him.

“It will get better,” Jonathan promises, breathing heavily from the strain as he slowly pulls out and pushes back in, keeping his movements steady, trying not to lose control. All he wants to do is fuck into Patrik and drive him into the mattress, but he has to keep his movements slow and gentle until Patrik loosens up for him.

He keeps his pace slow, watching Patrik’s face for any signs of true pain, but his discomfort soon gives way to an open-mouthed look, hands scrambling across Jonathan’s chest, unsure of what to do with them. “I am not a porcelain doll,” Patrik says eventually, thrusting back to meet Jonathan’s hips when he thrusts in.

“I hope you do not regret those words,” Jonathan says, giving Patrik no time to really comprehend them before he grabs the boy by his thighs, dragging him up to change the angle, making it easier to fuck in. He pounds his cock into Patrik, spurred on by his muffled cries, Patrik’s arm thrown across his mouth, teeth dug into his own skin to try and keep quiet. His cock has grown hard against his belly again, red and swollen as he leaks, incapable of doing anything but digging his fingers into the sheets as Jonathan fucks him harder and harder.

Jonathan leans forward, jerking Patrik’s arm away to cover his mouth with his own, sharing the same breath. “I knew you would feel good on my cock,” he breathes, letting the sweat drip down his brow, grinning at the way Patrik blushes, mouth going open in slack.

“Bastard,” the boy manages, reaching between them to grasp his cock, pleasuring himself to the rhythm of Jonathan’s hips. He’s lasting longer than Jonathan expected, but then again he is a teenager—there’s barely a refractory period involved when it comes to sex.

Jonathan shifts up, lifting his hips, changing the angle once more, and then Patrik lurches forward, biting his lip harshly, digging his teeth into Jonathan’s skin hard enough to draw blood. Jonathan grins, growling like a happy predator, knowing that he has hit that spot that drove Patrik crazy only a half hour ago. He keeps the angle despite the strain on his arms, hitting that spot on every upstroke, grinning as Patrik has to stop touching himself, too overwhelmed.

“Pretty thing,” Jonathan murmurs, his own mouth hanging open a bit dumbly, feeling overwhelmed himself by the sensation of Patrik tight around his cock, slick and wide open for him, feeling like God crafted him just for this, just for Jonathan.

Jonathan has fucked many men before, but none of them have made his heart seize up into an impossible ache.

It doesn’t take long for Patrik to lose it again, nearly _screaming_ when he comes, teeth dug into his bottom lip, arms around his neck like a vice grip. He shoots come all over his belly and Jonathan’s too, creating a bigger mess than before, clamping around Jonathan’s cock so tight that it _hurts_ , but Jonathan doesn’t stop fucking him.

He fucks in and fucks in until his vision starts to go black around the edges, until Patrik lets go of his lip and starts begging him quietly, asking for his come like a wanton whore, mouth moving a mile a minute as he says things like _fuck me, fuck me_ , _come inside of me, liubimiy_ , _please, miliy_.

Jonathan comes at the word _miliy_ , shoving his cock in in one last brutal thrust before he collapses on top of Patrik, emptying his balls into his willing body.

Afterwards he feels unable to move, arms a dead weight, even as his cock softens. Patrik allows him to stay, stroking down his back lovingly, kissing the top of his head until Jonathan regains his composure and pulls out, moving slowly as he draws a hiss out of Patrik.

He falls onto his back, closing his eyes as he flings an arm over his eyes. It takes only moments for Patrik to be on him, moving gingerly, but he seems unable to resist being within Jonathan’s immediate presence, despite the heat filling the room and the stickiness of their bodies. “Frans said that it would be slower.”

Jonathan snorts his laughter, opening his eyes. “Frans doesn’t know how to fuck.”

Patrik laughs too, burying his face in Jonathan’s throat, sighing happily. He stays there until morning.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

There are, unsurprisingly, bruises all over Patrik’s hips in the morning. He embraces them happily, poking and pressing at them, making the bruises even worse. It will be uncomfortable to walk with them, but he seems to care little, and wants more, even going as far as to goad Jonathan into fucking him again the next morning, his appetite for sex unsatisfiable now that he’s experienced it.

Jonathan doesn’t want to spend their last three days holed up in a hotel room fucking, but that’s exactly what they end up doing. He can’t keep his hands off of Patrik, well-aware that he will never be allowed to have the boy like this again. When they part at the hospital, that will be the last time that they will ever see each other. Patrik will be Europe’s prized prince, and he cannot be tainted by his association with Jonathan. No matter how great his dead was in saving Patrik, he will always be a Bolshevik. He will be the royals’ scapegoat for the ruthless murder of their cousins, and he doubts that he will be welcome in their sprawling palaces, not that he would want to be in their presence, anyway.

Patrik will be locked away from Jonathan and the rest of the world in a gilded cage, more protected and sheltered than he was before the revolution. Whatever little freedom he had had before will be gone now. There will be guards around him twenty-four seven, all privacy and independence stripped from him. Even if Jonathan _wanted_ to visit, he wouldn’t be allowed, and even in the off chance that a visit would be allowed, there would be no privacy for them to kiss or even talk.

He is releasing Patrik back into a world where he will be _crushed_ , any semblance of independence destroyed in one fateful swoop, but this is something that Patrik wants. He wants to be reunited with what little family he has left, and he must know what kind of life he is returning to. He will never return to the status of grand duke, and will be void of any political power, but as a cousin to King George V, he will be embraced and well taken care of, every need met.

Maybe to Patrik a life in a glided, constricting cage, is a life better than the one Jonathan has to offer.

When the day for their parting arrives, Patrik is covered in bruises from their numerous bouts of lovemaking, but he is melancholy, restless from lack of sleep, eyes always brimming with tears. There has to be some happiness at being reunited with his aunt and cousin under his melancholy, but it is hard to see.

Jonathan only hopes that they can run into the grand duchess before Patrik enters the hospital and is crushed by the sight of that imposter pretending to be Anastasia.

He is racked by his own melancholy as they dress for the day, unable to look at Patrik for long bouts of time. Patrik has been his whole life, his whole reason for living, and now he will be gone. Jonathan doesn’t quite know how to process his conflicting emotions at Patrik’s departure, so he crushes the emotions down like he’s always done. There is no point in shedding tears, or begging for Patrik to stay. The boy is tenacious and stubborn, and would find a way to reunite with his family, whether Jonathan forbid him or not.

Jonathan _should_ take them both to the train station and board the first train heading out of Berlin, uncaring about its final destination as long as it takes them west and away from Russia, but he knows that he _must_ reunite Patrik with his family, however small that family might be now. He cannot be selfish in his wants and needs. He cannot take Patrik to Paris, knowing that this might be his one and only chance to be with his family. Once Olga Alexandrovna sees that imposter in the hospital is a fake, Jonathan doubts that she will ever trust anyone to tell the truth again. She might deny Patrik a chance to meet with her in the future if they do not meet now.

Patrik trails behind him as he walks, stopping from time to time to catch his breath, eyes wide and wet.

“This is what you want,” Jonathan says, keeping his voice steady and harsh, hoping some sort of indifference will drive Patrik forward into doing what needs to be done. “Your sister is waiting for you in hospital with your aunt.”

Patrik nods. “I thought they were all dead.”

Anastasia is surely dead, but Patrik seems unwilling to actually accept that answer. “No, they are waiting for you. Come, _malysh_.” Jonathan takes him by the hand, uncaring now who sees them. He must get this over and done with before he rips his own heart out of his chest and rushes them off to Paris.

There is a crowd gathered outside the hospital, waiting to a get glimpse of Grand Duchess Olga and the lost Anastasia. There is a car waiting for them, ready to whisk them off to the safety of the palace. The police are blocking the entrance to the hospital, a relief for Jonathan. Olga Alexandrovna will have to suffer facing that imposter by herself.

Patrik begins to panic immediately. “How will we—” he starts, mouthing opening wide, voice shaky and desperate. “I cannot get to them!”

“Be quiet,” Jonathan commands, taking Patrik by his shoulders and pushing him forward against the crowd. When Olga Alexandrovna exits the hospital on her way to her car, Jonathan will push Patrik forward, creating an obstacle. She will not be able to avoid Patrik as he falls at her feet, face hopefully turned up so that she will recognize him in all of the chaos. Jonathan only hopes that she is not too blinded by her grief not to recognize Patrik immediately. He cannot have the boy arrested under false pretenses of trying to hurt the grand duchess.

They stand and wait, Patrik breathing toughly through moments of panic, Jonathan’s hands gripping his shoulders so tightly that there will be bruises, until, finally, the hospital doors open. First to leave the hospital is Ernest Louis of Hesse and by Rhine, but following close behind him his Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the Last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.

The resemblance of Olga Alexandrovna to her older brother is uncanny. She looks exactly like him, her dark, eyes wide and brown, but her narrow features are marred with sorrow, eyes red, trying to hide back tears. There is no young woman accompanying her, and with the way that she is hurrying to the car, head held high, Jonathan knows for sure that the woman pretending to be Anastasia is not truly the lost grand duchess.

He does not give Patrik any time to react. “You are my _liubimiy_ too, Patrik,” he says, and then he pushes the boy forward, right into the path Olga Alexandrovna.

The crowd erupts immediately, guards and policeman rushing forward to apprehend Patrik, fearing an attack on the life of the grand duchess. Jonathan loses sight of Patrik in all of the disarray, but above all the noise, he manages to hear the grand duchess scream. _Wait! I know that boy! Wait! Patrik!_

Jonathan does not wait to see Patrik and his aunt reunited. He turns on his heel, running away.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

Their— _his_ —hotel room is depressingly empty in the coming days.

He had become accustomed to loneliness after David’s death, never forming any real friendships or relationships with another human being, seeing no point in it, until recently, until he brought Patrik from that basement and escorted him on a whirlwind journey out of Russia, and now he must become accustomed to it again. Somehow, knowing the pain of someone slipping from his life but knowing that they are still alive, untouchable to him, manages to hurt more than losing someone to death completely.

He should immediately board the next train heading to the boarder, but he promised Patrik the 13th of August, and as stupid as it is, he’s determined to keep that promise. He stays in his room, only leaving to relieve himself and get food.

He spends Patrik’s birthday drinking himself into a dizzying spur, until he sobers up the next day and flushes everything down the toilet, including the heroin that he never threw away. David would never want him to be this way over a mere _boy_ , and he must honor his brother, _somehow_.

He is just rearranging his rucksack the way that he wants—the tin of gems is gone, the precious jewels sewn by Patrik’s expert hand into own shirt in the days leading up to his reuniting—when the door to his room creaks open. Thankfully, he has his knife in hand. He knew that there would be questions on how Patrik survived, and although he knew Patrik would try his best to keep his name hidden, the boy is untrained in real diplomacy or keeping secrets under pressure. He must have let something slip, possibly to the wrong person. It is only natural that the police have come to arrest him to interrogate him on the Revolution and the death of the Romanovs.

Jonathan sets the knife down on the bed with a heavy sigh, knowing that any of his attempts to resist will be worthless. They will have guns and batons, and his untimely, unnecessary death will surely get back to Patrik, causing him more pain. Hopefully the interrogation will be over quickly, and if the Germans do decide to kill him at the end of it, Patrik will be spared the news for a few weeks, months even. He turns, ready to face the police and whatever future waits for him. Even with Patrik safely locked away, he is still forced to give his life for the boy.

He cannot find anything in himself to care.

It is not the police standing there, ready to arrest him.

Instead it is Her Royal Highness, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, pensive dark eyes measuring him from head to toe, her face giving away little. Jonathan is shocked into silence, only able to stare at the woman. 

The grand duchess breaks the silence. “You are Jonathan Mikhailovich, from Verkhnyaya Pyshma?” Her voice is light, but authoritative. She expects answers immediately and without hesitation.

“Yes,” Jonathan answers, coming out of his shock. It is only the two of them in the room, the door shut tight behind the grand duchess, but surely there are guards just outside the door. A woman of her status, as small as it might be, will still be protected. “Your Highness—”

Olga Alexandrovna lets out a tiny, spiteful laugh at the title. “Do not pretend to respect me, _gohspodzin_. I know that you are a Bolshevik, and you were a guard in the Ipatiev House where my brother and his family were kept.” 

Jonathan goes silent, unwilling to fight with this woman until he gets answers as to _why_ she is here and not with Patrik. “The boy could not keep his mouth shut.”

“No, he could not,” Olga Alexandrovna agrees. “He told me everything.” She sighs, looking about the meager room, eyes landing on the knife on the bed. “But only after I had pressed him for answers.” She lifts her eyes from the bed to meet Jonathan’s. “He was very adamant that you were a good man, despite your,” she hesitates, “ _political affiliations_.”

Jonathan swallows. “Why are you here?”

Olga Alexandrovna lifts her head high. She is a short and thin woman, her shoulders sagging now under the weight of all of her sorrow. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Save him,” Olga Alexandrovna clarifies. “Why did you save my nephew?”

That is a question that Jonathan has never been able to answer. Not to himself, not to Patrik, and definitely not now to Olga Alexandrovna. It had been an impulse to carry Patrik out of that basement. “If he were to die, it did not seem right for him to die there.”

It is evident that that is not the answer that Olga Alexandrovna wants by the way she sneers, but she doesn’t press for more. Instead, to Jonathan’s surprise, she takes a seat at the small table in the room, sighing. She rubs at her forehead, looking nothing like a regal, grand duchess. “The boy is very unhappy.”

Jonathan is unsurprised by Patrik’s unhappiness. The boy is plagued by fits of melancholy, and he can’t truly say that Patrik has been happy. It has only been a few weeks since his imprisonment ended, and he is still dealing with the effects of his family’s execution. His happiness is truly hard to measure, but his melancholy is much easier to notice. “He is plagued by melancholy, _zhensheenah_. It will go eventually.”

“He is heartbroken.”

Jonathan wishes he hadn’t flushed all the alcohol down the drain. The woman looks like she needs a hard drink. “Can you blame him, _zhensheenah_? I am sure you are just as heartbroken as he is.”

Olga Alexandrovna shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. “I am devastated at the loss of my brother, of his wife, of my nieces, and of the place I once called home, but I at least have my husband and my two sons to help fill the void. Patrik—the boy has no one, not in the way I have Nikolai.”

“He has his family.”

“His family is not enough.” Olga Alexandrovna lifts her head, giving him a weak smile. “I was always very close to Anastasia and to her sisters, but I was never really that close to Patrik. He was, understandably, always with his mother or with his guards. When I took the girls unaccompanied to the theatre on the weekends, Patrik was forced to stay at home. It was easier to travel without the tsesarevich.”

“I prayed to God every day that no harm would come to my brother and his family, but I knew the moment that Nikolai was taken to Tobolsk that I would never see him alive again. And so I prayed instead that no harm would come to Alexandra, or to the girls, but I knew how much the people hated her too. When the papers said that she and Patrik has been moved somewhere safe, I knew that there was no hope.” Olga Alexandrovna pauses, collecting herself. “When that woman showed up claiming to be my beloved Anastasia, I thought God had answered my prayers. She, of course, was nothing more than an imposter.” She smiles, shaking her head. “I did not expect for God to throw Patrik at my feet instead.”

“I pushed him in front of you,” Jonathan admits.

“I know,” Olga Alexandrovna says, smiling again. “Patrik told me.” She sighs deeply, folding her hands in front of her. “I wish to take him to Copenhagen, where my mother and sister have already fled. Mama has a villa there, and if he is unhappy, Cousin George is willing to take him in as well.” She stops speaking, giving Jonathan a long look. Jonathan feels impossibly small under her penetrating gaze. No one has ever made him feel small, not even his own father. This woman has nerves of steel Jonathan has never experienced before. “He told me of your journey. It is a miracle that you were never once caught. God must really love you.”

Jonathan shrugs, lifting his eyebrows in disagreement. “I stopped believing in God a long time ago, madam. I doubt he has any love for me.”

Olga Alexandrovna gives him a weak smile. “God must truly love our tsesarevich.” Jonathan wants to correct her use of Patrik’s former title, but as she and her sister will always be known as the Last Grand Duchesses of Imperial Russia, Patrik will always be known as the Last Tsesarevich. He might never have the actual title of grand duke again, but he will always been known as the tsesarevich. 

The grand duchess stands, letting out a heavy breath as she pushes in her chair. “As badly as I wish to take Patrik with me on my next journey, I am afraid that he will not be able to withstand the journey.” She gives Jonathan an amused look. “He is covered in bruises.” 

Jonathan swallows, meeting the grand duchess’s amused gaze. Surely, Patrik did not tell her _everything_. “He is very prone to them.”

“That he is,” Olga Alexandrovna agrees. She smooths the front of her skirt to rid it of wrinkles. “Patrik was somewhat close to my first husband,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Peter always said that they shared many traits in common.” 

Jonathan knows what traits she is speaking of; the rumors that Duke Peter Alexandrovich was a homosexual even reached Verkhnyaya Pyshma. “I think we both share traits with your first husband, madam.”

Olga Alexandrovna gives him a kindly smile. “I am aware.”

“That does not bother you?”

The grand duchess shakes her head, her smile faulting, just a little. “I was married to a homosexual for fifteen years, sir. I have made my peace with men like you.”

“Besides,” she adds after a long pause. “That boy has been through enough. I do not think that I can deny my nephew anything, not now. I always believed that Nikolai and Alexandra spoilt the boy too much, but now I understand why. He was their baby, after all.”

Jonathan silently agrees. There was really nothing that he denied Patrik. He smiles at the memory of the boy eating his cake like a spoilt prince before he pushes the memory away. “As nice as our chat has been, madam, you have not told me why you are here and unfortunately, I do have a train to catch.”

“Yes, I am aware,” says the grand duchess as she reaches into her meager purse, pulling out two tickets. “A train to Paris, yes?”

Jonathan stares at the tickets, apprehensive. “ _Da_.”

“I think,” Olga Alexandrovna says, placing the tickets on the table before she slides them towards Jonathan. “That a trip to Paris would be easier for my nephew.”

“You—”

“I do not think he would survive the journey to Copenhagen.”

Jonathan looks back and forth between the grand duchess and the tickets. “He would be more comfortable on a passenger liner than on a train.”

Olga Alexandrovna gives him a peculiar look before she pushes her chair in, heading for the door. “Perhaps his body might,” she says as she opens the door, pausing in the doorway. “But I do not think that his heart would.” She looks Jonathan upon and down critically. “He will be waiting for you at the station at quarter past two. Do not be late, Jonathan. His heart is weak, and I do not believe that he can take losing his _liubimiy_ again.” She pauses, giving him a weak smile. “And I think, neither can you.” She gives a curt nod before she makes her exit, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Jonathan stands motionless, staring at the door, unable to move from his spot until he hears a car engine rev downstairs. He races to the window, catching a glimpse of Olga Alexandrovna as she turns to look up at the window. She stares back at him before someone ushers her into her car. This will be the last he will ever see of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna.

He turns back to the table where the tickets sit. There are commissioned for Brussels, instead of Paris, the best that the grand duchess could do while the war is still raging. He already has his own ticket purchased for Brussels, leaving in half an hour.

He closes his eyes, settling his nerves for a moment before he picks up the two tickets, stuffing them into his pocket.

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

At two o’clock, Jonathan settles himself at the front of the train station, flimsy rucksack over his shoulder, tickets in hand. The grand duchess had said a quarter past two, but he is worried that if he is even a minute late that Patrik will think that he is not going to show up. The pain of rejection would surely break his heart, spiraling him into an endless fit of melancholy.

He waits impatiently, tapping his fingers against his leg anxiously. It has only been three days since he last saw his _liubimiy_ , and it has already felt like a lifetime. He does not wish to be parted from Patrik again, not in this lifetime or the next. He was an idiot for letting Patrik go in the first place. He should have known that he would never have been happy in his gilded cage, not even in the company of his aunts or his grandmother.

At exactly quarter after two, a black Rolls-Royce pulls up to the station. The driver exits the car casually, pulling open the back door. Jonathan holds his breath, trying not to smile and launch himself at his _liubimiy_. It is a good thing that he stays in place, because it is not Patrik who exits the car, but a high-class society woman, followed by her husband. Jonathan feels his heart sink into the pit of his stomach.

The grand duchess had been so adamant, so sure that Patrik would be at the station at quarter past two. Surely she would have made sure that her nephew arrived promptly for their rendezvous, unless she was wrong about Patrik’s feelings for him and the true reason for his melancholy, and was unable to convince the boy to head to the station.

He has been played for a fool by Patrik, but he cannot find the energy in himself to be angry. He should have known better.

“ _Lapa_?” A quiet voice says from behind, tugging gently at his sleeve.

Jonathan turns, surprised to find Patrik standing there, a brown suitcase held in hand, looking just as pretty as the last time Jonathan saw him. His eyes are wide in relief, but there is a bruise at the corner of his jaw. “You are here, _lapa_.”

“And why would I not be, _malysh_?” Jonathan says, dropping his rucksack to cup Patrik’s face, gentle as he examines the new bruise, uncaring about who may be watching their affection.

Patrik allows for his head to be moved every which way easily. “Aunt Olga said that you may not come.”

Jonathan smiles, sighing in relief. “She personally came to tell me that I had no option but to board this train with you. She said that you were dying without me, _malysh_.”

Patrik knocks his hands away, lifting his head high, sniffling only a little as he feigns annoyance. He looks away as he speaks. “I _might_ have let it slip that I regretted leaving you.”

Jonathan laughs, wanting to kiss Patrik, but he knows that he cannot, not here at least. In the safety of the compartment he will hold Patrik tight and kiss him until they reach Brussels. “You _might_ have.”

Patrik continues to refuse to look at him, but his cheeks are red, and there is a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “It was—I thought that I would be happier, with her. And I am _grateful_ that I have been allowed to embrace her, that there will always be a connection to my father through her, but seeing her with Uncle Nikolai—it made me.” He stops talking, his blush going deeper. “I want what Aunt Olga has. She is happy now, or at least, as happy as she can be, given her circumstances. She waited fifteen long years to be with Uncle Nikolai. I do not want that for myself.” He finally looks at Jonathan, eyes large and bright, for once not wet with tears.

Jonathan searches his face, trying to find some sort of hesitation, but there is none in Patrik’s demeanor. He is sure of himself, confident in what he desires. “What are you saying, Patrik?”

“I am _saying_ ,” the boy drawls, “that you are my _liubimiy_ , for all of your faults. I do not think that I care for you in the way that Aunt Olga cares for Uncle Nikolai, but I think—I think that one day I _will_ , and if I go with Aunt Olga to Copenhagen and you to Paris, we will never see each other again.”

Jonathan cups Patrik’s face again, uncaring about who has stopped to stare. His heart is pounding away in his chest, and it is hard to keep the smile from his face. “You are coming with me to Paris, _malysh_.”

Patrik knocks his hand away gently, shaking his head. “I will not go with you to Paris.”

The smile falls from Jonathan’s face in a flash. He feels his heart seize up in pain, his hands frozen.

Patrik lifts his head high, clutching the handle of his suitcase with both hands. “I do not wish to do such a harrowing journey again so soon."

Jonathan can’t help but crease his forehead in confusion. “Patrik—”

“I am _bruised_ ,” Patrik insists. “And I am tired. And I know that this country holds ill memories for you, but I wish to stay here for a little while longer, until the war is over. The whole world knows that I am safe, and that I am alive, and we must go and stay with Cousin Ernest until I am well enough to travel.”

Jonathan is immediately suspicious, suspecting that Patrik wishes to say in Germany because Cousin Ernest is Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, grandchild of the famous Queen Victoria, brother to Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Tsarina of Russia. Patrik probably wishes to stay to pry what information he can out of Ernest Louis about his mother before she became the tsarina.

Jonathan can’t blame the boy for wanting to know more about a mother who, to him, seemed so utterly cold. “And when you are well enough to travel?” he asks, feeling anxiety over the answer. “You will go to Copenhagen?”

Patrik shakes his head. “I have been to Denmark, and I did not like it.” He pauses, licking his lips. “But I have never been to Paris, and I would like to see it.”

Jonathan lets out the breath that he hadn’t realized that he was holding, but there is still anxiety strumming through his veins. “You will go, only to see it?”

“Yes,” Patrik says, tearing at Jonathan’s heart. “And then I think that I would like to live on a farm. With cows and chickens and pigs.” There is a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You will do all the hard work, of course.”

“You are a _spoilt brat_ ,” Jonathan says, letting out a heavy breath.

Patrik smiles at him, looking like he is tempted to kiss Jonathan, but they are in public, and despite whatever favors he has with the Kaiser and with his Cousin Ernest, he cannot be caught kissing a man in public. Instead, he threads his arm through Jonathan’s before he pulls a pair of tickets from his pocket. “Come, Cousin Ernest is waiting for us.”

Jonathan does not wish to live in a palace, or to be surrounded by royals and aristocrats. He doesn’t want to be questioned about the revolution, or asked to relive their harrowing tale for the press, but their promise has always been to go to Paris, and Hesse and by Rhine is only another stop on their way. “To Hesse and by Rhine,” he relents.

Patrik takes his hand, leading the way into the station. He turns around to give Jonathan a smile, the expression finally meeting his eyes.

“To Paris we will go.”

**Author's Note:**

> some translations (from [here](http://ili-here.tumblr.com/post/161660147171/russian-names-pet-names)):  
>  _gohspodzin_ — man (according to my research, there is no word in Russian equivalent to the English “mister”, but it is appropriate to call a man that you don’t know “man”)  
>  _malysh_ — little one  
>  _moya radost_ — my joy  
>  _zhensheenah_ — woman (again, according to my research there wasn’t an Russian equivalent to the English word for “ma’am”, but it is appropriate to call a woman, “woman”)  
>  _bagodarju vas_ — roughly translated along the lines of “I am much obliged to you”  
>  _lapa_ — paw, which is yes, somehow a term of endearment  
>  _stchastye moyo_ — my happiness  
>  _miliy_ — dear/darling  
>  _liubimiy_ — beloved but it's much more casual than in English, _however_ if said for the first time it can be taken as a love confession.  
> 
> 
> Heroin was used as a pain killer from the late 1890s well into the 1940s. it was marketed as being less additive than morphine, but we all know how wrong that statement was.
> 
> I severely messed with timelines here, because Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna didn’t escape Russia until 1920, and further didn’t meet Anna Anderson until 1925 ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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